Maelstrom Prequel: Marooned
by illmatar
Summary: Marooned takes place between the comic book's issues #7 and #8. It's the missing year between the point Lancer pulls Rodimus out of the Jabez facility and the point she gets him home. Hurt/comfort fans might like it...although par for this series there's still more H than C. MATURE FOR VIOLENCE!
1. Chapter 1

Maelstrom Chapter 7.5

Marooned: Part A

Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original **Maelstrom Comics** and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http/ illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.

This chapter takes place between the comic issues #7 and #8.

 **Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, trauma, and sex. Rated M for adult themes!**

 **Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!  
**

"Cold."

The word froze in the air and fell to the ground a good distance away, carried by the wind and unheard by anyone, even the woman who spoke it. Lancer shivered and glared at the desolation around her. The gale she was standing in so stupidly was only mostly to blame.

Her braid, complete with conductive wire, heavy steel beads, and the occasional hidden blade or lock-pick, swung up and away from her body, a feat which surprised her a bit. She didn't feel the biting air too much against her skin, but her armored body-suit deflected shrapnel quite nicely so she guessed she shouldn't complain about it's stiff weight anymore. Talon would be so pleased she'd finally learned to appreciate it. If she saw him again, she promised to tell him...well...maybe. He would tease her or he'd just gloat. Hard to decide which was worse really.

Where was he now? Where was the Maelstrom? Would they even be looking for Lancer and her...companion? Would they be mourning her (or not) instead and moving on?

"Fuck this place!" she growled. "No mountains, no rivers. Just sand and wind as far as the eye can see! Why are we here? What the hell is wrong with this stupid mech?" She snatched the teleport belt off her waist and drew her arm back as if to throw it into the sea of sand. Her teeth bared, revealing long fangs, and her demonic horns changed the pitch of the wind as it cut past her. Her arm froze, trembling, mid-swing, and she clutched the belt in her fist, knowing she'd never find it again if she threw it. Her eyes flared. Revenge on the only target she had for her fear would have made her feel better, but the belt was probably the only hope she had of Robert tracking her with the ship.

The wind, jealous of her wandering attention, changed directions, blew sand up her nose, and sent her running towards a sand dune of slightly larger dimensions than those around it. The shadow at the base had been her doorway a few minutes ago when she had retreated from the physical safety of her den to gain some emotional space out in the icy wind. Being inside immediately cut off the wind but made her feel desperate and crushed.

When they had arrived it had been in the middle of a sandstorm. They'd gone from the over-bright, over-sterile Jabez facility to a howling, choking cloud of pain. The man she was carrying...she had dropped him. Just dumped him at her feet to throw her body over his. In an instinctive panic she'd blasted back into the wind with her powers. The wind and sand had blown her lance back at her but as she struggled to push back continuously the heat had fused the sand into an irregular glass shield in front of the two of them. Shocked, but not about to argue she'd kept at it until she had a complete artificial cave to cower in and she no longer heard the wind as much. It was almost 3 inches thick by the time she was done. Then she'd lasered an air-hole to the surface on the lee side, and only cutting the door when she needed to get out . It was certainly a use for her powers she had never considered before.

The dome had saved both of their lives but not before both of them were sand-blasted on any exposed skin, which for her friend meant pretty much all of it. He looked like he had a sunburn from head to toe, not to mention all the lovely nooks and crannies the Jabez had left to hide sand in.

A sound escaped her – part growl, part...no...assassins don't sob. Right?

She was not the one to handle this. Nope. Nope. Nope. If they'd been on Maelstrom like they should have been, she would have dropped this mess in Jordan's lap and run for the showers. Whether or not her new friend would have lived would have been long odds even on-board the ship. It had a really snazzy med-bay (or was it a lab?) but they couldn't figure out what most of the gizmos did. Jordan's medical training was mostly self-taught since joining the crew. At least they could have put the guy in the decontamination unit and kept him warm while they found a proper facility to help him.

Desperation made her stare at the teleport belt again. Maybe that CV's laser blast had boosted the jump. Maybe she could recreate it and get them home. ….. Yeah. Sure. The Maelstrom would be exactly at the same co-ordinates, and she would give the mech just the right amount of boost, and it would all be just dandy. Considering the astronomically high odds that her new pal and she had landed ON the surface of a world, which just so happened to have breathable, if uncomfortable air rather than in a star or the big old void she probably ought not to push her luck. She shook her head. Something had gone wrong with the belt, but this was almost certainly an old set of co-ordinates – not luck. Given that the prior owners of the belt were also the prior owners of the Maelstrom, she probably should set up the cloaking field even though her shelter was almost invisible. Ah the joys of needing to be found, but only by the right people.

Then again, even if the wrong people found them she could maybe turn that into a damsel-rescues-self situation.

Right. No cloaking field. Head for the poles or the equator and see if the belt picks up a jump point. No problem. Except for the six foot something piece of raw meat she'd have to carry the whole way. Plus no more than a few days worth of food and water. Plus her handy first aid kit which wouldn't cover half of what it needed to.

She spent a few minutes practicing all the curses she had learned from Pagan and Jordan. Pagan's curses were gutteral and nasty. They required phlegm. Jordan's people used few words and fewer curses, but made up for that with ear-shattering quality. Not enough. Turning her fury into something moderately useful, she clutched a series of large stones in her hands and heated them with her surging powers until they glowed. It made a sort of makeshift campfire she used to surround her hamburger man. If nothing else, the cold was not going to kill him.

Feeling obligated to look at him, she gingerly pulled her cloak off his body. Well. Still breathing. Joy. She brushed futilely at some of the sand on his body, and grimly tried picking some out of his cuts with her talons. She had to dig a bit sometimes and soon had an impressive pile of bloody gravel next to her heated stones. The tips of her fingers glowed now and then as she attempted to keep her nails sterile at least.

Hamburger Man never stirred, and she lost track of time digging at his skin.

When she finally finished she confronted her next dilemma. Resources. She had water in her sub-space pack. Quite a bit actually, courtesy of the link to subspace which rendered its contents weightless, but it wasn't an infinite supply. The same went for her first aid kit. Very well stocked, but not the hospital this guy needed. Should she use the water to wash his wounds or save it for drinking? Which wounds should she stitch? Which should stay open? Maybe she should just cauterize the lot of them and call it done. Her first aid training covered stitches and simple splints. This guy surely needed a team of specialists.

Probably he'd die without waking up. Probably it was better that way.

Lancer's eyes flared and she growled again. When she found him she'd considered killing him herself (still an option she supposed.) One quick, painless jolt to his nervous system would have ended his suffering forever. She was so sick of that move though...used on countless CVs again and again...and this guy wasn't a Convert. His head had been hanging down with his hair over his eyes. She wanted to see his face. Who was he? Who would the Jabez feel the need to torment this way when usually they just killed you or cored out your brains to use you? She'd brushed his bloody bangs up to give some kind of identity to this Jabez experiment. It was a light touch – the kind you give to a corpse you find on the street – but his head had snapped up and his eyes flared open. The look he threw her would have blistered concrete and she'd smiled a cat's grin full of fangs. Still fighting. It might have been token resistance, but he was still fighting.

She got that. Just like she viewed every day she went on as a chance to spit in the face of the forces which had shredded her soul and condemned her to darkness.

"To futility!" she proclaimed, and boiled some of the water. Screw it. She began washing his wounds one after another, deciding on their future as she went. Stitches for the narrow cuts on his leg. Bandages for the electrical burns. Bandages for the acid burns. Bandages for the straight up burned burns. Skin glue for cuts that could handle it. Nothing but salve for the countless needle marks and their attending bruises. Some were so large she assumed they were taking marrow samples. Really...what were they hoping to learn from this guy? Was that a surgical incision on his thigh? It went deep into the muscle and looked like the skin had been peeled back. There were plenty of older scars that were nearly healed, but the implied agony they spoke of made her hiss. One seemed to go all the way around his scalp, as if it had been removed and replaced. Good times no doubt.

Her absolute favorite was the perfect four inch square on his right biceps. So much fun to clean that out. The skinless section of exposed flesh was dissected into quarter inch squares. The first small section was almost healed because only one layer of skin had been peeled away. The next section had two, the one after that had three, and so on until the last which was so deep it probably went almost to the bone. She could just imagine his screams as those cold, spidery hands had taken one neat piece of him at a time. What had they done with those perfect little cubes of Hamburger Man's meat?

Even if it healed he was going to have one interesting set of scars. She flushed the deepest parts with a reckless amount of water. They were in a desert, but if infection set in he wasn't going to live long enough for drinking water to matter. They could die of thirst together for all she cared.

On and on she worked, using her bandages, her water, and her limited energy as if those limits didn't exist. All or nothing. What the hell. By the time she was done she'd used up most of her bandages and salve, very nearly all of her suture material, and the small glass den smelled like burned flesh from all the wounds she'd decided to fry. Lucky for her she was at it long enough to get used to the odor.

"You're cooked hamburger now, Hamburger Man," she said. "Sorry about that. By the way if you have any internal injuries you are way screwed. I could rip you open and all, but I couldn't put you back together after that!"

Finally she sat up and stretched her cramping back. She inspected her work and then shifted her focus to her patient as a whole. She guessed he was a bit over six feet tall. He had a very solid, muscular build that spoke of lots of gym time and maybe even steroids. She arched an eyebrow. He was probably vain as fuck. Deep red hair that she'd butchered get to get the blood out, absolutely perfect skin between the wounds, nearly no body hair, no navel and no nipples. What sort of narcissist is so into himself that he has that kind of plastic surgery? Could the Jabez have done that? Lancer shook her head. She didn't pretend to fathom the Jabez in any way, but there wasn't a single thing she could think of that made removing a man's navel seem like a good idea. Her Jabez scanner thingy didn't indicate any mutancy, which sort of surprised her, but the readings seemed weird anyway...if she understood what she was looking at. Hmm...that was unlikely.

Lancer decided to take stock of her stocks. Maybe looking over what she had would somehow inspire an intelligent course of action. She emptied her pack to look over her possessions.

One Jabez-hexagon scanner thingy. She knew how to use it as well as any of the Maelstrom crew, which meant she knew how to turn it on and aim it at someone. Robert had managed a rough translation of the Jabez symbols which showed up in lovely English. Anything he hadn't figured out yet came up in Jabez. There was more of their spindly bullshit on her screen than English at all times, but it was enough for the crew to do basic body scans. That way they knew roughly what they were dealing with in terms of mutancy or not, what power category and what strength. It also told them what level of Conversion the person had gone through, if any. The scanner would also act like a compass and distance meter, and give her a rough idea of the general environment. Robert added new symbols to their lexicon all the time but she was not fool enough to think she understood even half of what it was trying to tell her.

One busted fucking piece of shit mechanical teleporter and one useless com-link. She tried to reach the ship again. When static hissed at her she hissed right back.

One set of headphones and her music on a memory crystal...because music sometimes kept her from fanging out and killing people. Sometimes. She loved that Robert rigged that thing up for her. Every song, ever. No worries about running out of memory either, not with the crystals the Maelstrom used.

Medical kit: Gauze...nearly gone. Maybe she should save the used stuff and sterilize it as best she could. Suture thread. Practically down to the spindle. Antibiotic coagulant ointment. If she rolled the tube around one of her needle-knives maybe she could get a bit more out of that. Skin glue about the same. The alcohol was more than half gone. Plus there were a few syringes and things she had no real clue what to do with.

Two and a half gallons of water. A few protein drinks. Five days rations for one. How does one feed and hydrate an unconscious person without an IV? Should you even feed someone like that? What if he threw it up? Even if she stuck to the protein drinks he'd almost certainly inhale it rather than swallow it.

Lancer arched an eyebrow at her fingers and made them glow. Her foes often suffered muscle spasms when she attacked them. Could she refine that down to just his throat and make him swallow? What a scary prospect! But...if it came down to him dying of thirst or her powers...

"Why'd you have to be in my section Hamburger Man? I kill people! Understand? I'm a mutant and a demon and I kill people. I take whole bodies and make them into dead bits and pieces. I do not know how to fix you!" The mutant waved her taloned hands in front of her companion, but he remained unconscious and unimpressed. She clenched her fists and noted with some faint interest that punching through her palm again with her claws barely hurt anymore. The scars must be pretty good. She pressed her hands together and added the scent of her own burning flesh to his. Not wasting sutures on that.

What else was on hand? Lots of good stuff for taking people apart. Assassin's goodies. Knives and needles, garrote-wires, poisons, climbing rope, and so on. Her cloak, her armor, a change of civilian clothes, and a naked dude. He was NOT going to fit in her spare shirt.

That was all she had. Talon could have probably survived off that for years. Robert could have probably built a shuttle. Lancer could... wish she had someone to hurt. Someone with too many thumbs perhaps. Someone she could make creative cube shaped bits out of in progressively deeper designs.

She'd used a blade on mystery dude's bloody hair to save energy and save herself from yet another fine odor. Why didn't they sell singed hair as an air freshener anyway? Kain seemed into it. Could the telepath find her here if he was forced to search for her? What good was being a Class 1 if you couldn't find someone you knew, even if you didn't like them? Maybe she should think about him. …. Maybe not. Everything she could think of ended with an opinion such as "rude," "snob," and "asshole." While he made it no secret that he felt the same about her, she was afraid if he did somehow reach her mind that he'd leave her to die anyway out of spite.

Then she thought about his mean, reptilian mind brushing up against hers and decided she would rather not be found. She remembered the creeping, early stages of her possession... how the entity burrowed into her mind slowly at first, like the roots of an old tree into soil. She had felt wrong, but couldn't place the problem. Not until those roots had burrowed deep enough to shatter into her mind and soul.

Lancer drew her knees up to her chest and buried her head between them for a while. How long she sat there with her arms wrapped protectively around her head was unclear, but it took extremely urgent pokes from her bladder to bring her back to now. She scurried out into the cold to handle matters and realized perhaps she should have collected her own urine a bit late. She decided not to worry too much about it since she didn't have a container free anyway. Maybe when the first fresh gallon was gone she'd be desperate enough to consider it. The puddle she made froze before it could soak into the sand and she ran back into her warm little dome.

As tired as she was she was too nervous to sleep, so she decided to sharpen the knife. She picked it off the top of the heap where her precious weapons were shoved rudely to the side. It was disrespectful treatment for her friends, but her cloak was the only blanket she had and she couldn't have Hamburger Man rolling over on a dagger in his sleep.

Once the first blade was done she went on to the next...and the next. Malice sometimes asked why she bothered with all the hardware when she obviously had her powers and her talons at all times. Sometimes though a knife served her better. It seemed less of a calling card when she had a job that required stealth. Somebody killed so and so rather than Lancer killed so and so. Let the bad guys wonder if her powers were more limited than they were. Let them wonder if they had more enemies than they did. Besides, learning to use knives and throwing stars with accuracy had given her something to work on. Dealing with the frustration of missing her targets or getting the weapons to penetrate had helped her learn to manage her temper after her possession whereas her lances almost never missed.

Controlling herself would always be the thing to work on after all. She shivered, and fought not to dwell on her possession, or worry if another entity like the one who had taken her was here...right now...

In the quiet of her glass shelter, Lancer heard her heart beat revving up. No. She closed her eyes and tried to meditate. That failing she focused on slowing her heart down at least. No panic. No flashbacks. Not here in this tiny space. She'd shred herself to ribbons if she had an episode in here, and Hamburger Man really would be ground beef.

She missed Claudia's soothing presence. She missed Malice's stalwart, if confused friendship. She missed knowing Malice could put her in lock-down at a moment's notice too.

Really Lancer? You haven't even been on your own a day.

Hamburger Man shifted slightly and she waited to see if he would wake. She wondered again who he was. The Maelstrom crew had gone in looking for Autobots, having pretty solid information that the Jabez had at least one. As Talon had rudely put it, none of them wanted to face Converts "as big as a fucking house." Plain old fleshy CVs were enough trouble. She'd heard Jordan radio in to Robert that the Jabez had been holding "something big" but there's been no sign of anything like that on her circuit. Maybe the computer records Robert snagged would tell them something.

She'd likely never know though. She knew she was the last of her team on the base, so at least she knew her friends all made it back. It saddened her to know that they'd worry but at least her com-eye would have told the others she wasn't captured. They wouldn't go tearing into any more Jabez strongholds just to find her. It was a good system she was grateful for. The eyes tracked their progress, teamwork, and mistakes they could learn from. Most importantly they insured not one moment was unaccounted for during a fight. Never again would they bring home a Converted team member...not after Silva.

Lancer blinked rapidly a few times.

In any case, the rest of her team would probably assume she and her charge were dead. Given her meager stock of supplies and options they were probably right on the money there.

What little light was filtering through the sand and the dark glass of her dome started to fade. Well, she had to keep those stones warm anyway and she could already feel the cold temperatures dropping fast. She put a foot up against the nearest rocks and started pumping energy slowly into them – supplying her own light source as she did. Being a mutant sucked mostly, but it had its perks.

She put her headphones on and hummed along on and off while her stock of perfectly sharp weapons got resharpened. Maybe if the Maelstrom was close they'd pick up her energy signature. Maybe if someone else did she could turn the tables and steal their ship. Either way, she hoped the dome glowed prettily from the outside.

Rodimus drifted.

Far away from pain and fear, his mind showed him impartial reruns of his life. Memories rose and fell in no particular order. His terms as commander, his ridiculous youth, his recent torture, various battles, various parties, various arguments and quiet discussions with Optimus. Everything he'd every done or felt – without the feeling. None of it brought him pain or joy. It simply was. Good.

He was warm, resting, and at peace. Certainly that meant he was dead.

Also good. He'd failed enough. He was ready to sleep.

Dimly he heard someone singing and focused on that, reasoning it would lead him away from his life and whatever the Jabez had planned next. He opened his eyes and was confused and delighted by what he saw. A human woman was sitting near him and humming to herself. She was even glowing. Elated, he concluded he was certainly dead and that all those silly human stories of the afterlife were somehow true.

"Hey, look! An angel!" he exclaimed.

The entirely un-angelic curse the woman yelped in surprise was his first hint he was wrong. He jerked. The pain was his second hint.

Lancer dropped her knife and swore when her charge spoke to her, and she saw his bemused smile turn into terror from one heartbeat to the next. He scrambled, crablike, away from her as far as he could. In their tiny dome shelter this got him about a foot away from her.

" I'm not going to hurt you!" she told him. His eyes darted wildly, one side to the other. She didn't have to ask what he was looking for. "They aren't here! We're lost Mister. We're in real trouble, but they aren't here." Reaching out to him to pat his hand earned her a wild punch which she mindlessly avoided.

He blinked and stared at his hand.

"See? No shackles! I'm not your enemy! You're free. My name is Lancer. Who are you?"

"This is a trick," he growled.

The mutant laughed. "You might be better off if it was. I'm sorry. We went in looking for Autobots but we found you instead. My teleport belt malfunctioned and we are marooned. Here, look..." She reached out and cut a window out of the wall, catching the piece as it fell. There was just enough light outside for him to see the wind swept dunes outside but he barely glanced at it. "We are as far from that lab as you could ever hope." Her voice caught a little. " I think we may both die anyway, but at least it won't be there."

"Where's Goldbug?!"

"Who?"

"My friend. They turned him. They turned him human too," he hissed.

" I don't know. Malice found someone...wait. What do you mean "turned him human too?'"

He just glared at her with acid green eyes.

"Who ARE you?!" she demanded.

Rodimus, seeing no harm in giving this Jabez plant information she already knew, told her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The night that followed would go down in Lancer's memory as one of the worst of her life...right after her possession. She was trapped in a confined space with a very strong, very frightened individual who was determined that at least one of them would not survive until dawn. She didn't know why she believed his story about being an Autobot, but she did. Maybe it just comforted her to know his lack of a navel was due to not having been born, rather than some overwhelming narcissism.

She brushed his skin just shifting her weight and he flew into wild flailing – kicking and punching erratically like a man being attacked by bees. Avoiding the blows wasn't so much hard as exhausting. He'd gone after one of her knives and tried stabbing her. She snatched it right out of his fingers before he got in a second strike. This was good because next he was aiming to stab his own heart. She snatched up all her pointy friends and dumped them in her pack. Inspired by her shelter and needing an instant way to keep them away from him, she blew a small crater into the floor of sand and buried her pack. Then she sealed the top with glass.

The minute she turned her back on him he tried punching her in the back of the head. She ducked without even looking at him, grateful his attacks were so obvious. Once she was satisfied her glass lid was at least enough to slow him down, she pulled the heat back out of it. She heard him moving again behind her and sighed.

"Really?" she asked. He had one of the rocks she had been using to keep him warm in each hand.

"Where's Goldbug?"

This time she declined to argue with him. Clearly someone had lost a few circuits recently. He made to hammer her head between his rocks so she eeled around his back and wrestled to get his arms and legs under control.

He was damned strong and her desire not to rip all the hard work she'd done stitching him back together put her at a disadvantage. For the first time since her possession, she was sort of glad for her tail. He bit her forearm. She was so tired at that point she just let him clamp on it while she locked down his arms and legs. With her armor on she didn't even feel it.

"Well this is cozy," she remarked snidely while he tried futilely to break her basket hold. She just sighed and waited while he gnawed on her arm. She could only imagine what a picture they made – a demonic mutant all wrapped up around a humanized naked Autobot with torture wounds from head to toe. She was pretty sure Talon would have something inappropriate to say about that. After a while her wrestling buddy seemed to exhaust himself and sagged in her arms.

"You done yet Rodimus? I feel like we're on a first name basis now that we're so close."

He bit her arm again.

Thus the night went. He attacked her. She restrained him until he quit. He attacked her again...ad nauseam. What remarkable endurance and dedication to a goal! Lancer got that. She respected that. The fact he was trying to kill her showed a spirit she admired. She just wished he'd save it for the Jabez and let her sleep.

Over and over he demanded to see his friend.

Over and over she reminded him they were alone.

Finally against all prudence for his injuries and his lack of attire, she'd grabbed his arms from behind and hauled him outside. The cold sucked the air from her lungs so she imagined it made some impression on her naked companion.

"We Are MAROONED, Rodimus!" It took every ounce of strength and leverage she had to pull him around in a circle to get a good look. " I don't know where we are! I don't know where Goldbug is!" She spun him and kept spinning him until he sagged in her grasp. She took that as comprehension and shoved him back inside. "Are you done trying to kill me? I don't want to knock you out but it is beginning to look like a good idea."

Rodimus had scuttled to his corner again, shivering and staring at her. It was almost like she could read his mind. His expression of searing hate slowly softened into confusion and pain as she watched him finally realize that even the Jabez were unlikely to design an entire wasteland for his benefit. The intense green eyes lost their focus. He was no longer staring at her, but at something only he could see. Her face seemed frozen and tight, as if the muscles in it were at war with each other.

It gave her a chance to study him.

She'd heard of him of course. Every child on Earth got their Transformer education early. You were taught to recognize the individuals involved on both sides of the conflict in any mode. Fire drills, tornado drills, Transformer drills... You were supposed to learn who to run from and who to run to, but most parents prudently just told their kids to run from all of them and get out of the way. It wasn't like there were all that many of them anyway, and a new Prime was big news. His face was bruised and swollen, but she could sort of see it – the angular lines of the face she'd seen on TV softened slightly into her Hamburger Man.

What in the hell? WHY? Why would the Jabez do this to him? Just to say they could? Bullshit. They always had a plan. Now that he was awake and feeling his pain she could "see" into his nervous system to a degree. His body practically glowed. Lots of nerve activity, but none of it seemed to be deeply internal – at least along his torso. Hopefully that meant he didn't have any internal bleeding or organ damage.

Spiffy. That only left dehydration, starvation, and infection to worry about. There was nothing she could do about any of it hiding in this bubble.

Reaching out, she put her hand on his forehead to see if he was as hot as he seemed to her mutant sight. She expected him to jerk away. Instead he just turned those eyes on her and glared. Lancer pursed her lips and felt the fangs go a bit. Not catatonic – just sulking.

She took a deep breath and tried to act like a patient normal person would. She even did a soothing voice.

" I didn't mean to scare you, I just wanted to see if you had a fever. I'll remember to warn you next time OK?" No response. Moving on. "Look, I really am trying to help you, but we can't stay here. There's no water. There's no food and if we don't find some soon we've had it. I'd like to move when the sun's up and it's just cold instead of freezing."

This earned her a blink and a squint.

" If we don't get moving we'll die," she explained again.

His eyes narrowed further and he turned his back on her. Apparently that suited him just fine. The mutant's eyes flared white and she took one, deep calming breath before jumping him again.

Thus the war of wills began. Rodimus found himself wrapped in her cloak before he knew what was happening. She bundled as much of him up as she could with the heavy, armor-laced material, and she sashed it to his waist by cutting off a precious length of her climbing rope. It was the best she could do to protect his non-existent modesty and his skin from the cold and wind. She cut the top off her pack with her powers and cut that into ovals roughly the size of his feet. The only way to tie them on was to knock him on his ass and sit on his legs. More climbing rope turned her pack into a drawstring pouch.

Being dressed like a helpless doll made Rodimus realize fighting this bitch was no more effective than fighting the Jabez. She wrapped another length around his chest and shoulders like a harness. He wasn't sure what that was about until she grabbed him by it and hauled him outside again.

"Now," she proclaimed, "we are going south because I say so and because all the wind is coming from the north! This is going to be perfect! March you!"

Rodimus shook his head and backed up. She grabbed him by the front of his drapery and got right in his face.

"Hey Mr. Hamburger Man. I do NOT have a whole lot of patience left. I am stuck here because I tried to save your sorry ass. You are NOT going to make this harder and I am NOT leaving you to die. So walk! I do not want to tie you up but I will!"

He walked, but even once they got moving Rodimus was a decidedly unhelpful rescuee. He simply stopped frequently, forcing her to push or pull him. Some of it was pain from his wounds...some pain from the cold. Most of it was the mess in his head.

Lancer decided by the end of the first day that she had two Rodimi on her hands. She designated them Rodimus One and Two, in the order she met them. Rodimus One was a raving lunatic. This was the green-eyed guy who lashed out at anything that moved, which pretty much meant Lancer. She was pretty sure One didn't even see her really. One was in the clutches of the Jabez and trying to kill them to save his friend. Goldbug's name was her signal to duck.

Rodimus Two knew where he was and who she was. His eyes were a dull blue that looked only inward. He didn't fight her except by dragging his feet and being generally uncooperative. Two would even do cool things like speak to her from time to time, although his vocabulary was pretty much limited to "No," and "I don't care." Two was somewhat easier to handle but he was sneaky. Two didn't want to kill her, he wanted to kill himself. He was all kinds of creative about it too.

The first hour away from their dome his listless feet slid out from under him and he tumbled back down the dune they were trying to climb. He landed face down and just lay there. Lancer swore and surfed her way down the sand to flip him before he smothered. The second hour he actively threw himself off the top of a steep hill. Lancer wasn't sure the fall would kill him, but she was pretty sure if her temper got any worse she would. She managed to grab his harness and pull him back by leaning her full weight the opposite direction. Furious, she pulled out still more of her ever dwindling climbing rope and tied his hands so she could steer him.

This led to an immediate launch of a nuclear strike by Rodimus One. His bound hands went for her throat and he snarled he was going to "give her the drill." They grappled and rolled down the dune, and to Lancer's amazement he actually **snapped** her metal laced rope and landed a blow or two before she could find her balance. Once on her feet she knocked him on his ass with a pull on his ankles with her tail and a hard shove.

She spat blood and failed to enjoy the way her lovely new fat lip interacted with her fangs. "You don't have a drill you idiot," was the best she could come up with. Rodi One glared greenly at her and flipped to his feet. The assassin used his shoulders to handspring off and pulled him to the ground in front of her. Grimly, she held on to him again until he was so exhausted he was sweating in spite of the cold wind on his skin. His head dropped and he suddenly went slack against her grip. He looked around.

"You done?" Lancer asked.

He turned and looked at her over his shoulder. She noticed his eyes lingered ever so briefly on her bruised face.

"You throw quite a punch, but could you save it till we find a place to camp?"

He muttered something that almost sounded like "Sorry," but she didn't quite catch it. She wasn't going to make him repeat it. Hauling him to his feet was becoming a painful process. This time she tied the rope to the back of his harness.

Hour four rolled around and Lancer needed a break. She poured some water right into her mouth from the jug and offered it to him. He shook his head.

"Oh. Were you thinking I was giving you the choice? You are a silly, silly person Mr. Ham...Mr. Prime Sir. You need some water, so you can drink it like a big boy or we can do that sexy rolling in the sand thing you like so much first and still have some, because I will win."

One eyebrow arched at her while she waved the jug at him and grinned a mouth full of fangs. Finally he answered her. " I don't want to...and I don't know how."

"You drank energon," Lancer reasoned.

He shrugged and looked away. The mutant looked at the water in her hand and said, "You'll figure it out." She gave him the jug and to his credit he didn't try to throw it away or waste it. He did choke though before he finally got a few swallows down.

"You really are an Autobot aren't you?" she muttered.

"Why would I lie?"

"Well, it is sort of hard to trust a guy who tries to kill you every hour or two," Lancer mused.

" I'm sorry...I don't...I don't always know...where...who..." Rodimus began.

"You don't need to apologize. I know what the Jabez do to people – you're traumatized. You do need to turn around though," Lancer told him.

"Why?"

"Because I need to pee and I am not going where I can't see you," Lancer said.

" I don't care. Daniel used to do that all the time when we were out in the woods," Rodimus said.

"Daniel? As in the Ambassador's son?" Lancer asked. Ooo...she knew someone who knew famous people now.

Rodimus nodded. These names...they seemed so far away from him. From anything that mattered.

"Great," Lancer went on. "Turn around anyway."

"Why?"

"Because Daniel's a boy and I'm not and you are not watching and I said so!" Lancer snapped in a rush. She felt the fangs and horns start up.

Rodimus shrugged and complied. If he noticed her lapse in temper and it's associated accessories he didn't say anything. He did wait patiently for a minute or two while she worked out of her armor and then he simply started walking away. A sharp tug on his leash reminded him she was watching. Rustling behind him told him she was done.

"Don't you have to go?" Lancer asked.

" I tried to go and you stopped me," Rodimus pointed out.

Lancer dropped her head and groaned. "No. I mean don't you need to...ermm...go?"

Rodimus just blinked at her. The Jabez had their own methods of dealing with biological functions and he was too new to organics to understand what his body was trying to tell him.

"Doesn't it hurt?" Lancer asked. "You haven't...I'm sorry, I didn't think to keep track...but you haven't once gone this whole time!"

"Hurt? Everything hurts. I don't know how any human copes with any of this. I can feel everything and it all hurts," Rodimus explained. His voice remained dead flat.

Lancer tilted her head at him. " I'm sorry. You have to try...you'll feel better I promise...and you'll get sick if you don't." This earned her the faintest shrug. "You are a pain in the ass, you know that?" she growled. Before he could move (or she could lose her nerve thinking about it) she pounced on him, grabbed him from behind, aimed with one hand and gave his bladder a small jolt with the other. It worked quite well actually. She was embarrassed and he was horrified. Leaking fluids of any kind were no part of an Autobot's normal metabolism. Once he was finished she sprang away from him as if burned.

"Next time take care of it yourself!" she snarled. He refused to look at her or answer her, but found to his amazement that there really was a slight drop in the discomfort he was in. That alone was eventually enough to get him to take care of this particular point of business on his own...eventually. She still had to force it on him a few more times before he got the hang of it...and sick enough of being over-powered by her. Lancer got used to keeping track of it all for him – his preoccupation with other things made it a non-priority.

On they walked. Up one shifty dune after another, unable to trust their footing or each other. By sunset they'd found neither food nor water, but Lancer in particular was too tired to go on past dark. This time there was no handy sand storm to blast into, so she used her powers to tunnel a cave directly into the side of a sand dune. She pushed Rodimus in once it was cool enough and then struggled a bit to bring more sand down over the opening to give her something to seal it with.

" I'm so tired," she said with a sigh. She dug into her pack and found some of the rations. She handed one to Rodimus who took it and frowned slightly more than usual.

"No," he said.

"Oh you were thinking you had a say in it again were you?"

"You shouldn't waste your food on me," he said flatly.

Lancer hissed, "Oh fuck you. Put it in your mouth and fucking chew. After that it's like the water, which you will also be having more of." He drank without arguing so she relaxed a bit and had her protein bar. Going on about 36 hours with no sleep, little food, and lots of fighting as she was, relaxing a bit led right into falling asleep before she made sure Rodimus ate anything.

Rodimus stared at her a few minutes and stuck his ration back into her pack. With nothing to do or even really look at he fell asleep in a few minutes too. They both got a few hours of rest in before nightmares woke up One and he tried using his tether to strangle Lancer in her sleep.

All the young mutant knew was one moment she was sleeping the dreamless sleep of the deeply exhausted, and the next she was fighting for her life. With no time to register where she was or who was attacking her she went into full demonic berserk mode instantly. He was much stronger than she, but she snapped the cord with her powers and sank her claws into his arms. She kneed him in the groin and twisted like a snake out from under him.

He was in no position to come after her – finally learning first-hand why human males complained at length about this particular vulnerability. Not as painful as having cubes of your arm-meat carved out, but still, quite something. The demon crouched as if to spring at his throat, her teeth bared, her eyes glowing and lighting their small room. From his fetal position on the floor, Rodimus smiled at his own pain and smiled at her murderous stare. Finally he had a way to end it at hand!

Maybe it was the smile...maybe it was the fact he stopped fighting her. Lancer blinked once, twice, and then roared her frustration. Snarling, she clenched her taloned fists into her palms, letting the nails penetrate flesh like they wanted to, but not his. The sight of her blood sent him tumbling back to the torture chamber, while she fought her own memories as well. When she finally roped herself in he was still laying on his side, but he was staring into the past again and the pain he felt was there.

Fury gripped her, but not demonic fury. Indignant fury.

She kicked him in the arm. Not hard, but considering he had stitches and trauma and all that she should probably have kept her hands and feet to herself like a good girl. Fuck that. She kicked him again for good measure.

"You fucking suck!" she explained when his eyes focused on her abuse rather than his previous abuse. "You selfish, stupid dickhead! You will NOT use me to commit suicide! All I want is to do more good than evil before I die and you will NOT use me like that! The Slavers wanted to use me to hurt people, the Jabez wanted to use me to hurt people, and the fucking demon DID use me to hurt people! People I love!" She kicked him again. "Now I've got a fucking Autobot PRIME who I am trying to fucking help trying to use me to hurt himself! FUCK YOU!"

He sat up slowly and rubbed his arm. His eyes were quite green again, but this wasn't Rodimus One or Two. This guy was sort of a blend. Pissed like One but present like Two.

" I just want you to leave me alone," Rodimus Three snarled.

"Yeah? Tough. I'm not giving up on being rescued," Lancer stated.

" I don't want to be rescued. I don't deserve it," Rodimus' voice broke into a harsh, hateful whisper. It wasn't confession – it was judgment. Death sentence passed.

Lancer frowned at him and knew she should have some deep psychological advise for this traumatized soul. What she had instead was, "So fucking what? Looky here pal. What does what you deserve have to do with anything? I have to kill Converts all the time...you know what those are? The ex-people the Jabez have lobotomized with their fucking chips? Do they 'deserve' to have their head cored out? Do my friends and I 'deserve' to have to slaughter their Walking Dead imitations? It gets kinda old you know...even for a fabulous killer like myself. Those people don't deserve to die, and you know I'm pretty sure I don't deserve to live either. I'm a mutant by birth, a demon by possession, and an assassin by training...I don't see 'lives happily ever after' anywhere in that do you? No? Well, tough crap there too. I am probably a walking example of 'more trouble than worth' but I was forced to see that I need to try. So. I'm using you. I am saving you. I am. You are one of the good guys and I am getting you home. Maybe your people can help you. Don't...don't you at least want to warn them? If the Jabez were looking into Converting you it's only a matter of time before they take more of you."

She saw that concept crawl its way into his brain. He threw her a sullen glare. She took that to mean she'd scored some guilt/duty points at least. He hated her for that, but that was OK. Hate was something she understood and could work with. As long as he behaved better she was all good with that.

"Gonna quit trying to make me kill you at least? I don't think you can really help it when you try to kill me although I'd appreciate the effort," Lancer sneered.

Rodimus, still sullen, nodded.

"Great. Now as I don't see an empty ration wrapper, let's do lunch!"

Rodimus' cooperative spirit vanished like mist, so Lancer retrieved the abandoned protein bar, crushed it in its wrapper, and jumped him. She bound him up with tail and legs, bent his head back towards her shoulder and forced crumbs into his mouth as far back as she could. He had no choice but to swallow, but he gagged and retched on it as he did.

"Just like giving a cat a pill," Lancer proclaimed. " I learned that move when I was an ignorant civy flat-liner and I had a sick pet. When ARE you going to learn to behave Hamburger Man?"

Rodimus coughed and glared at her. "That hurt."

"That's because you're supposed to chew. I will be happy to teach you when you decide not to do everything the hard way. Coincidentally, the 'Hard Way' is named that 'cause it's harder. So let's learn our lesson shall we? Obstinance equals pain."

Continued in Marooned: Part B


	2. Chapter 2

Maelstrom Chapter 7.5

Marooned: Part B

Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original **Maelstrom Comics** and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http/ illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.

This chapter takes place between the comic issues #7 and #8.

 **Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, trauma, and sex. Rated M for adult themes!**

 **Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!**

Continued from Marooned Part A

Both of them were done sleeping, but Lancer left him alone until morning. When the sun rose enough for her to see without burning her own power, Lancer decided to have a look at his wounds. She had no idea what to do if she found wide-spread infection. There weren't enough bandages left to replace all the ones she used the first day. Cauterizing all his wounds was still an option, but she was afraid she'd kill him, and certainly it wouldn't help his state of mind.

She started by checking on the easiest thing first – his wind burn. Hers, comparatively small, still hurt like a bitch. If anything, it was worse on her hands from all the wrestling in the sand.

To her shock his skin (between the bandages) was absolutely normal...which was not normal in her mind.

" It's...it's all healed!" she cried, taking liberties with his "clothing" that should have scandalized him. One after another she checked under his smaller bandages, setting many aside.

Lancer glanced up at Rodimus. He sat stiff against the wall, looking at her with wide eyes, breathing slow but hard. She gave him a nervous, apologetic grin.

"That wasn't so bad right?" she tried. His eyes only narrowed. "The rest...the rest are worse. I'll try not to hurt you too much OK?"

"Just leave me alone," he growled. Not a request. OO...someone gave orders after all. Alas, she was not a good listener.

" I can't...I have to look," she soothed, enduring a sort of flashback of her own. Just a few years ago...tied up in the recovery ward to keep her from tearing herself apart again. Let me die...just leave me alone! So much had been ripped from her she didn't want what as left to linger. Claudia had fought to calm her, struggling against her own brain damage which left her empathy so hard to control and her shields so vulnerable to Lancer's pain. Lancer knew just being in the room with her had hurt Claudia deeply and wished her friend would just give it up.

" It gets better," Lancer told her sweating patient, paraphrasing what the rest of the crew had tried to tell her a thousand times. "The pain in your body...the pain in your heart...I promise it does!"

" I don't care," he said.

" I know. You don't have to. I'll care for both of us OK?" She decided to look at the worse first...in case she ended up having to stop. As she feared, the gauze on his fabulous arm wound was crusted and stuck to his skin. She pulled up as gently as she could but he shuddered violently. She stopped.

"Leave me alone."

"Not happening my friend. I wish I could make it easier...hmm..." Lancer's eyes lit. She could see the uptick in electrical activity under her fingers when she touched him. Such a tiny surge in power from his nerves to his brain. Could she work that delicately? Could she spare him some pain with her powers without hurting him? Most of her skills with her lances centered around accuracy and control, but still she mostly acted like a well aimed blaster or a really greedy energy magnet. This was a level of refinement she never would have thought of. What the hell...if she could sculpt sand domes out of thin air, maybe she could find a new dimension here too.

She started peeling again while pulling the tiny charges from his nerves into herself. He didn't relax, but he also didn't flinch or fight. The mutant decided she could pull more vigorously since her "anesthesia" seemed to be working. She worked the wrapping free of the scabs and drainage. Her eyes widen with shock once she saw the wound.

The checker-board wound was better! Not healed by a long shot but better! The first few squares were gone, the next few so sealed they didn't need bandages. The last quarter of them were the really deep ones, but even the deepest was better. It had been deep enough to put her finger in down to the second knuckle. Now it was about half that.

"This is amazing! You're a freak! I wonder if that's why they were playing with you," the mutant mused. Her fascination made her careless of the fact that Rodimus' trauma involved being scrutinized too closely as well as physical pain. She barely dodged the punch he flung at her face.

"You're getting the drill..." One hissed at her, "You're ALL getting the drill."

Rodimus' endurance was improving too. This time it took almost an hour before One got tired, Two emerged, and she used all her new bruises to guilt and bully him back into Three. She did call a truce on the rest of his bandages, especially since he was clearly healing better than a normal human. Was that because he was an Autobot or was it something the Jabez had instilled in him?

They got moving again and actually made some progress.

Lancer's new friend Three was her favorite. One was dangerous, but she just felt sorry for him. Two was like dragging around a 200 pound meat sack with an eye for deep holes and quick-sand. He was heavy and annoying and terrifying. Three was big fun. Goading Three resulted in him stalking you, which meant you could lead him where ever you liked and he would follow. You could do all kinds of things to Three to keep him focused on hating you. You could throw some guilt over his people on him, you could throw some guilt over what a big old pain in the ass he was. You could physically jerk him around and annoy him by making it clear he couldn't retaliate too.

The assassin was pretty sure Claudia would not approve of her methods. Bullying a trauma victim so he got pissed enough to walk...yeah. Not Claudia's style. Lancer wasn't Claudia though. She couldn't do that humming thing that calmed everyone down. She didn't have fluffy down on her arms either that made them nice to be held by. Besides, it hadn't been Claudia that got traumatized possession victim Lancer out of restraints. It had been Silva - the assassin Jordan had hired to help rescue Claudia. Silva, who had stayed on long after Jordan's money ran out because Slavers could even make a professional work for free. Silva with her hard shell and insect-like movement. Silva with her hard predatory voice. Noiseless feet. Words like bullets. Over and over, she'd perforated Lancer's self-pity and excuses.

"Quit whining Lancer! You aren't evil YET! What are you going to DO in the mean time?!"

Lancer and Malice had been Silva's students from the moment they'd been rescued by the core crew, but it had been mostly self-defense and power refinement training. At that moment though, Lancer had decided to suck Silva's knowledge dry. If she was condemned to be some sick kind of death machine, she would become the ultimate death machine. She would pay up in advance for her future crimes. She would become a weapon for her team to use. Let the others decide on which slavers died. She would be the how. Obsessing over her training slowed down her obsession with her possession. Hand to hand combat, stealth training, all those knives and weapons she carried around for no sane reason. Silva's alien style...then anything else she could glean from any source. Lancer the volunteer assassin. No money required...just a target. Every waking minute devoted to becoming the most exquisite murderer she could be.

This was Rodimus' nanny. Poor guy could not catch a break.

On they walked. On she goaded to keep his feet moving and his focus on her. Lancer thought the dunes might be getting a bit shorter, but she couldn't be sure. Trying to keep an eye on the treacherous footing was hard enough, but her pal made things so much more exhausting. One protein bar and four hours of sleep since she left the Maelstrom wasn't really cutting it either. Finding food and water was becoming an obsession.

The thin sun drifted lower and Lancer blew another hole in a dune to shelter in. Her energy greedy body was running low on that power too. Not a problem she'd ever had to face before. Since her powers first emerged it had always been too much power to cause her grief. She didn't know what to do about it. At least her little domes started warm and stayed that way with minimal help from her. Their body heat was enough to keep them cozy.

"Get in there Rodimus," she sighed. When the figure beside her didn't move she checked his face. While she'd been working on their home for the night, Three had slipped away and Two stood staring vacantly off into space. She didn't have the energy to goad him, so she just took his leash and pulled him in after her. Touching him directly might have set off One. He must have been somewhat aware though because he ducked his head when he needed to and sat down on the far side of the dome.

"Time for dinner!" she sang, brandishing a protein bar.

Three reappeared like magic and threw her a malevolent glare. "No. Eat it yourself."

Lancer laughed at him. "Don't be stupid. How can you be the guy I saw on the news all the time? That guy even had the smarts to be rude to some of the idiot politicians and reporters when they were acting like morons. Your predecessor never did that. If we don't find food or aren't rescued soon we will both be facing starvation. I've got 3 protein bars left. If you eat or don't it won't make any difference so eat! Starvation is a nice slow death too, so if it comes to that I promise to off us both OK? I don't want to force you – especially since I know you'll probably try to kill me in your sleep again tonight."

" I'm sorry...why don't you leave me alone so I don't hurt you?"

Lancer looked at him, head cocked. " I'm pretending to be a hero, that's why. It's on my bucket list to rescue a fair dude in distress. Besides, do you think I don't understand? The nightmares and the flashbacks I mean. Rodimus, it wasn't that long ago my friends had me in restraints so I wouldn't hurt myself...or them. I don't blame you...it's sadly normal after all you've been through. I just wish you'd cut me a little slack when you AREN'T flashing so I can save my strength."

"This is stupid. I'm a liability. I'm nothing to you," Rodimus argued.

" In such a hurry to die? You're something to me because I say you are. Why do your people help so many humans? I'm helping you because I am...isn't that enough?"

" I can't control my own mind, Lancer. All I wanted to do when they had me tied up was kill them, and now that I'm here I'm still trying to kill them. It's you I'm hurting, but it's them I see."

" I know a few tricks that helped me...maybe they can help you too."

" I don't want help. I'm supposed to be the one helping..." Rodimus trailed off a moment, his eyes that murky shade that signaled Two was taking over. "Helping...when I'm free...I'll help you...I'll help you find your mind..."

Lancer shuddered. She didn't know who he was talking to, but the horror on his face told her to pity them too. She had no idea how to respond to this, so she just went awkwardly along.

" If you can find my mind that will be amazing," she quipped. She was satisfied that he started and looked at her in confusion. "Time to eat Mr. Autobot. Stalling is not gonna work... you do get that. Right?"

She taught him how to chew. He found the texture disgusting from crunchy, sticky start to soggy, clotty finish. After chocking and gagging through his first voluntary swallow, he was amazed she didn't have the compassion to let him stop. No amount of complaining or appealing for mercy moved her. She expected him to take a **second** bite.

"You can't be serious," he said seriously.

"You...Slayer of Unicron...you are whining about eating an 8 ounce protein bar and you think **I** can't be serious?" Lancer snickered.

"But..." he tried, and then looked at her. She had one eyebrow cocked and she looked a bit...amused. He looked at the rent remnants of his protein bar and contemplated the futility of fighting her over maybe two or three more disgusting mouthfuls.

He finished it.

The next night was easier for him because they split the last bar. The night after that was even easier since they didn't have anything left. Two nights after that, he was finally clear on exactly which confusing, uncomfortable sensation was actually hunger and also clear on why it sucked.

Mid-day of day seven.

"Something's MOVING inside me!"

After four hours of walking in silence, Rodimus' panicked voice startled the crap out of Lancer. She was just tired and worried enough to think he'd somehow picked up a parasite when her ears heard the rumble of an empty belly.

"You're hungry. Your stomach is growling," she snapped. She was hungry too, and getting short tempered as a result. Shorter tempered.

"That's my own stomach moving around by itself? How do I stop it?" Rodimus demanded.

Lancer's eyes narrowed, "You eat or you deal with it. Those are your options."

"This is ridiculous. This body is such a chore...it's always leaking or needing something. Disgusting!" Rodimus spat his words indignantly. Lancer, who was feeling light headed and ravenous, wondered how he still had the energy to wave his arms around.

She opted not to answer but pointed in the direction they were heading. Her hand shook slightly. The lack of food and the lack of ambient energy were combining to wear her down a lot faster than her companion, or even a normal person. She saw his eyes focus on her shaking hand and he stared into her face for a minute. Was that concern or a noting of weakness to take advantage of? Either way, he pretended ignorance. She pointed again more forcefully and he walked.

At least the terrain was getting smoother, but her legs felt like jelly anyway. There were even a few plants, dry and nutrition-less, coming up through the dusty sand. If she'd had any juice left at all, she'd have drilled down for water. They were almost done with their last gallon. She was afraid her body would start leaching power from his so she spent most of the day trying to figure out how she would keep him safe from himself if she had to sleep away from him.

If he noticed when she ended their travel day earlier than usual, he again feigned not to. Finding a dune tall enough to dig a cave in proved impossible so she simply aimed lower and made him a small pit with a glass roof. The soil at the base steamed momentarily when she was done.

Rodimus raised an eyebrow at her.

"Get in there," she demanded wearily.

"We aren't going to both fit in there," he said.

"Nope, just you. Get," Lancer said.

"What's wrong?" Rodimus asked.

"Nothing. I'm just tired of your nightly attempts to kill me," Lancer said harshly.

The naked guy in the cape turned to face her and studied her seriously as if seeing her for the first time. She could practically see the wheels turning...and then she met Four.

"You're lying," he stated. "What's wrong?"

"Just get your ass in there," Lancer said, "or I'll do if for you."

Rodimus gave a snort that sounded suspiciously like a stunted laugh. "You're so mean. You push me around, you yell, you insult, and you'd like me to think you don't care when you hurt me. I'm crazy...I'm broken...I'm not stupid Lancer. You think I don't notice when you shut down my pain when you change my bandages? You think I haven't noticed you give me twice as much water as you drink? Every time I shut down on you, you try to bring me back gently before you work on pissing me off. I have nightmares. You have nightmares too. You scream in your sleep you know. You scream 'Get out! Leave me alone! Stop hurting them! Stop making me hurt them!'"

"Get in there Rodimus," Lancer insisted.

"Not until you tell me what's wrong. If you were going to isolate me you would have done it already. This isn't about my problems...it's about yours," Rodimus stated matter-of-factually.

Lancer stared at this new guy with some concern. This guy was THINKING. This guy was present with her and thinking. He was going to be much harder to handle.

"You've noticed I'm a mutant too, while you were noticing the rest?"

"No. Every human I've met glows and blasts holes in the ground with their fingers, and grows a tail and horns when convenient too."

Great...somebody was rediscovering sarcasm too.

"The horns are not...not because I'm a mutant," Lancer stammered. " It's the energy powers. I'm out of juice. I'm afraid I might start drawing from your body in my sleep, so I'm sleeping out here." She paused and glared at him. "Do not get any ideas Mr. Death-wish."

"You're going to make your own shelter?"

Lancer just shook her head.

"You're so tired you plan to sleep out in the open." It wasn't a question.

Lancer didn't have the energy to make plausible excuses for that, so she nodded.

"And if something jumps you?" Rodimus asked.

Lancer sneered. "Then I'll die and so will you, so you'll be happy, or I will win and we will have a fancy dinner. Either way, one of us will be happy...oh and you'll have some underwear at last. It'll be great. Now get in there so I can seal you in."

He stared at her again with that unnerving intelligence and complied without a word. Instead of a full sheet of glass she left an opening big enough for him to call her through if he needed her. Then she walked about ten yards from his "window" and went straight to sleep on the sand.

In the end it was good they had separate sleeping quarters that night, although not for the reasons they imagined.

Lancer was dead asleep. If a predator had stumbled across her it would have had an easy snack, but the forces approaching their camp site weren't hungry. While they weren't out of the sand yet, they were close, and the terrain and weather patterns were changing.

The wind changed directions. The breeze and the scent were enough to wake Rodimus up, although he didn't know why or even question it. Sleep was still an alien thing to him. Fearful wakefulness was not.

Glancing at Lancer briefly told him she was out cold. He tested his cell/shelter. Quite strong of course. She didn't trust him. Of course, he acknowledged he wasn't trustworthy. He curled his legs in front of his body and tried pushing against the glass. It didn't budge. What a bitch.

Still a captive.

He rested a minute or two, hating his jailer.

The rational part of him realized that was at best highly unfair and at worst another sign of his obvious insanity.

He wasn't used to human sensations enough to identify "damp" although he did note the wind was coming from the south-east. Was there another sand-storm coming? Perhaps he should warn her.

Maybe she'd get buried and suffocate. Maybe trying to burn a shield into the sand would drain her dry.

Wow. You really hate her don't you? some part of him said. She's a human. She's trying to help you...

Furious rage argued. Captive. Forced to walk. Forced to eat. To drink. To endure the disgusting aftermaths of eating and drinking. He kicked the glass barriers repeatedly – no longer trying to even be quiet about it.

Lancer didn't stir.

She must be half dead with exhaustion... Mostly he didn't care, although he briefly wondered how to finish off the other half. At the same time he was sorry, and impressed with her determination. She's brought us a long way. …. A long way I didn't want to come!

Both feet hammered the glass.

He didn't notice the thunder. He was doing something. How long had it been since he'd been allowed to just do something? No restraints. No Lancer interfering. Just lashing out against his cell felt good even if he wasn't getting anywhere with it.

On and on he kicked – his face twisted into an knot of glee and murder. Something was going to break! His legs...the glass...it didn't matter. Even the pain felt good!

And then the lighting struck Lancer. The thunder deafened him, but it was the bright light that threw him right into a flashback. How long he lingered there, with Jabez fingers working metallic claws that pealed the skin off Goldbug's face until the bones of his skull were exposed was uncertain, but when he came back to the present his glass cage was shattered, his hands and face were bleeding from peppered shards, and his mutant guardian was lying prone on the ground moaning. He noticed a large, jagged piece of cage was already in his hand. He was pleased it was sharp enough to cut him quite deeply.

FREE! He could run! She'd never be able to keep up! Or...or he could kill her. How much he wanted to...kill her...kill something. Her eyes met his, white, pupil-less, but he knew she saw him. His blood dripped down the shard he held so tightly. Red on the sand...he stared at it for a while, remembering Goldbug bleeding...those unknown girls bleeding. So red. If he wanted to he could make Lancer bleed too. If he wanted he could take his time with it.

She moved her lips slowly...maybe to beg for mercy he didn't have.

He leaned in to listen. Should be good.

"ruh...run!" she said. She tried to grab him – no – push him.

"RUN!" she cried.

Maybe it was a lifetime of battlefield training. He would never be able to explain why he obeyed against all his fuming obsessions with ending her or ending himself. That tone...you didn't disobey that tone when someone shouted like that at you. Your feet moved before your brain even registered what was said.

He ran. He felt the hair on his arms lift with static and threw himself down. Glancing behind he saw the storm target the mutant with a massive lightning strike. He whipped his head around and buried his eyes in his arms.

The world behind him lit up again, but he had his eyes to the darkness and remained in the now. The thunder made his ears ring. Again and again the bolts shook the world. How much could she take? Perceptor would be fascinated. He winced...he'd forgotten the names of the others. Only Goldbug remained. The name opened a chink in his madness though – the armor he'd made to shield himself from the heat of his own hate.

Perceptor's name was immediately followed by a flood of others, but the one that crushed him was Optimus. What would the senior Prime think of his partner laying in the sand, plotting to kill the human woman who was rescuing him? Or rather, failing to rescue him? He looked over his shoulder at her. The lightning blinded him again, but this time the sight of her was so odd, so surreal, that even the flashbacks couldn't override it.

She was suspended off the ground, caught in the current of the plasma. The leaders that fanned out on their way down re-converged in an unnatural fashion to find her. The discharge spent, she flopped to the ground, hissing with pain.

Even in this state she was watching for him. Their eyes met again. "Don't..." she growled. "Don't come over here. Don't you use me Rodimus!"

He blinked. It hadn't dawned on him. If he went over there it would surely be the last thing he did.

And she couldn't do a damned thing about it either.

He pushed himself up on his hands, still clutching his shard.

She'll never forgive herself.

Stupid Optimus. What did he know about hate?

You don't hate her. You just hate yourself and wish she'd left you to die.

Truth hurt. Truth was not satisfying at all.

Still had his glass though. Walking into lightning was not the only way out now was it?

She'll never forgive herself for that either. Something...happened...to her. The way she says it. 'Don't use me!' Something did. You know that kind pain when you hear it.

Slag it. Slag it.

"SLAG IT! SLAG THIS, SLAG OPTIMUS, AND SLAG YOU TOO LANCER!"

Lancer watched, helpless in the grip of the lightning strikes, while he ranted and gestured madly. The shard he was holding gleamed – glass and blood in the light she was emitting. He cut himself repeatedly while he raved – slashing his leg, his chest, and his face.

It was going to be another long night.

Rodimus wore himself out a while before the storm did. The lightning toyed with Lancer for nearly an hour before it seemed to tire of her company and moved on. She still warned him to keep his distance though so he sat dejected just outside her no-Rodimus zone. His scarlet piece of glass fell to the ground next to him.

She watched him suspiciously, even though he could see the repeated strikes were causing her pain.

"Put some damned pressure on that leg!" she snarled at him. Her fangs and horns were more pronounced than he remembered and she was hard to understand.

Looking at the referenced leg caused it to hurt some. Of course, the best hand to put pressure on it with needed some pressure too. He shrugged, pushed, and let them fight out which would clot first. The gash on his face ran freely.

"Can I help you somehow?" he asked after a while. He could tell the way her muscles were jumping and twitching was not entirely normal, especially since her fingers were making her palms bleed. Oh...those rough spots were scars.

"You're nuts," Lancer criticized.

"Yeah," Rodimus agreed.

" I thought you wanted to kill me," she accused between surges. " I thought you wanted to run off and die."

"That too...and you're making me sorry I didn't."

She swore at him – at length.

"You sure you don't need help?"

"When this settles down maybe. It's not that bad," she said.

"Oh. So this gets worse?" Rodimus inferred.

She swore at him – at length.

Finally, "Only once before. This time is different. I was just so low...I couldn't control it like I can when I'm balanced. I'm cramping some though."

" Is your energy level back to normal?"

"A bit high, but that's all good," she sighed, sitting up slowly. She was pretty sure the storm had moved on to bigger and better things. She fought to stretch her spasming muscles and heard crunching. The sand underneath her body was nothing but fulgurites.

"Does that mean you don't have to eat anymore?"

"No. It helps in some ways but food isn't just energy. I still need protein and minerals and all that good stuff."

"Oh. So why didn't you pack more food in your pack?" Rodimus asked.

"What do you mean? It can only hold so much," Lancer drawled.

"Doesn't it have a subspace link? You carry it like it's weightless," he reasoned.

"Well, yeah. It does compensate for the weight somehow but there's still the matter of volume Rodimus. I put several gallons of water in there," Lancer reasoned wearily. Four was a tiresome guy.

"Can I see it?" he asked.

Lancer stared at him, thinking of all the pointy, poisonous friends she'd stowed in there. She glanced at his crusty, improvised dagger and reluctantly shrugged off her pack. He took it and looked inside, making no move for her weapons.

" It IS a subspace pocket. You can put almost anything that will fit through the opening in there. How did you get your hands on Transformer technology if you don't know how to even use it? Is it available on the black market somehow? Subspace tech was one of the things Optimus decided never to share with humans since you sneak enough weapons around to hurt each other already."

Lancer stared at him. Part of her was furious that she could have brought a whole year's worth of rations with her. The other part was sick with what she had to say to him.

"Rodimus...this isn't Autobot technology. I got it off the Maelstrom. It's Jabez technology."

Rodimus One grabbed his blade and went right for her face. She was way too tired to fight him, so she zapped him as gently as she could while still knocking him out. Also too tired to lug him the few yards to her previous hole, she dug a new one for two right there and rolled him in. Then she took advantage of his unconsciousness to check his old wounds and bind his fresh ones. She separated their spaces with a few more glass stalactites, and sealed the entrance. Curling up around her growling guts, she fell sound asleep again.

She woke up damp.

Groggy, sore, and famished, she was initially dense enough to simply add that fact to her list of "things that suck."

She glanced at her pal and added the fact that One was digging furrows into the sand with his fingers as he wordlessly tried to grab her.

"You suck too," she told him. There was nothing to do but wait him out, so she sat with her knees curled up, watching those powerful, claw-like fingers stretching and grasping away. The trenches he made were impressively deep and he didn't even have claws, the poor guy. They held up pretty well too, at least until he drew new scars in the sand over them.

Then she realized.

"They're WET!" She laughed and clasped his mauling fingers for a second. "Look Rodimus! Water!"

Maybe it was the laughter...something completely alien to his time with the Jabez. Maybe it was the way she touched him – firmly, but not painfully. He blinked.

"Look! The ground's wet! We're getting somewhere Rodimus!" Her grin shocked him. He didn't care about the water. In fact he was a bit disconcerted that one of the best chances he had for getting out of this life seemed to be fading, but her smile stunned him. Certainly it was nothing he had expected to see again.

Oblivious to this, Lancer went on to express hope that they'd find food soon too, and that they could hole up somewhere and wait for rescue. He felt it rude to point out that rescue was not on his agenda, so he just watched her while she rambled on a while. She sliced his cage apart and let them both out. Then she made him stand back while she aimed a finger and blew a hole into the ground. The soil steamed, but otherwise remained unchanged, so she tried again.

This time she stood over her pit and waited. Rodimus came to stand next to her. They both stared obsessively down, praying for exact opposite results. Lancer's wish won out. Rodimus was reduced to handing her the empty water jugs so she could sit in the soggy bottom of her pit, waiting patiently for enough liquid to pool. She loaded every gallon except one a capful at a time. She held the murky jugs up over her head like they were championship trophies.

"That's filthy water," Rodimus commented. Maybe he could dissuade her from surviving.

"My scanner says it's safe," Lancer said, "but we're going to purify it anyway."

" I don't see how," Rodimus said.

" I will be delighted to show you!" she said. "It will be awesome!"

And she did. Rodimus had no desire to see her succeed, but he had to grudging admit to himself she made the most of her powers. She tilted one of the silt filled jugs and rested the empty one over the top. Then she flash-heated the bottom container so quickly the water turned straight to steam. The jug on top got the opposite treatment. The steam curling up into the top jug got flash frozen instead. It coated the sides of the jug.

She wasn't able to capture quite all of it, and the first jug remained full of silt, but they did get a decent amount of clean ice in the top container. "Like I said, awesome!" She wiggled the cold jug at him and smirked.

He raised an eyebrow and sighed.

"You are an ungrateful dickhead Rodimus," Lancer laughed. Even his pissy scrouge face wasn't going to dampen her relief.

"Yeah, but that was pretty smart," he told her.

They continued south. Her day got better and his got worse. By mid-day she plunged a clawed hand into the sand and caught their first meal.

"What is that thing?" Rodimus wanted to know.

"Absolutely no idea. I'm pretending it's a lizard," Lancer chirped.

" Is that what your scanner says?"

"My scanner says it's edible. There are other symbols coming up but Robert's translation program doesn't seem to have gotten that far yet. It's all good. I'll settle for edible."

Rodimus eyed the carcass she had split length-wise and stretched out on a rock she was now heating. It was roughly snake shaped, with 6 stunted limbs that resembled flippers along its length. It sizzled against the hot rock. She had the organs cooking off to one side too. The whole thing smelled like road-kill, a scent every Autobot was intimately familiar with.

Obviously Lancer had very twisted ideas of edible if she thought he was going to eat that.

"There's not much to that thing, maybe you should eat it all. You're the one who's shaking," Rodimus tried.

" It's so cute how you keep thinking crap like that's gonna work on me. Tell me, does 'Prime' really stand for 'Professional Bull-shitter' or is this something special you do just for me?"

"No, it pretty much means 'professional bull-shitter,' especially in my case," Rodimus said with a sigh. " I don't think I should eat that."

" It's not going to hurt you. It may not be tasty but it won't hurt you," Lancer said.

"No...I mean...I shouldn't," Rodimus stammered. He stared at the meat, but it was Goldbug's blood and muscle he saw.

Lancer looked up from poking at their meal with the dagger she was using to flip it with. "We'll find more soon. I'll be fine," she assured him.

He shook his head. He was shaking. "Shouldn't..."

Lancer watched his eyes...wondering if she was going to have a fight on her hands. She was also starting to get that this was about the lizardish thing, not about how much she got to eat.

"Rodimus, we don't have the luxury of going vegetarian here."

"Nothing...nothing should die for me...nothing more should die for me..."

"Rodimus..."

"They tore him up! They split him. They skinned him...just like that thing...they did it for me! Talking didn't stop them! Nothing stopped them! They wanted my screams, so I stopped screaming, but that didn't stop them! They took his circuits out and then they took his bones out! They took his eyes and grew them back! It was all for me! They made me watch! They locked my eyes open so I would watch! They wanted me to know I couldn't save him! I failed him! I failed them all! Please don't kill things for me! I shouldn't be alive! Things shouldn't die to make me live!" He continued to ramble but his sobs were so powerful she couldn't make out a word.

Lancer completely forgot all her rules for dealing with him she dropped he knife and let the first meal she'd had in days burn. She gathered him up in her arms and rocked him. He fought her, but not the way he did when he was flashing. He tried to push her away – to deny himself the comfort she was trying to give him. Apparently he wasn't worthy of being held either. She held him anyway, while their meal turned itself into a nearly inedible charcoal briquette.

In the end she had to force it down his gullet.

The next morning, she caught two more, and had to force feed him that meal too.

In all fairness, it was all she could do to choke them down as well. They smelled exactly like road-kill, so she assumed the nasty rotten taste of it all was a lot like road-kill too. Also, Jabez scanner notwithstanding, they both got diarrhea by mid-morning. This shattered Lancer's "never leave him alone" rule too.

He behaved though because she threatened him as she ran off behind a dune.

" I can HEAR you and if you make me come over there now we will see if I can aim with my butt as well as I do with my lances!"

Rodimus did, in fact, get the concept of "fates worse than death" and just stood there. Or maybe he would have just stood there anyway.

Lancer decided something had changed in her traveling buddy. He didn't attack her as often, and no amount of goading pushed him into getting angry with her. The brief flash of insightful intelligence she'd named Four was only a memory. Leaving her with Two. Sluggish, dull-eyed, annoying Two.

Continued in Marooned Part C


	3. Chapter 3

Maelstrom Chapter 7.5

Marooned: Part C

Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original **Maelstrom Comics** and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http/ illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.

This chapter takes place between the comic issues #7 and #8.

 **Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, trauma, and sex. Rated M for adult themes!**

 **Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!**

Continued from Marooned Part B

When they ran into their first pack of predators, he just stood there making it easy for them. Fortunately her lances were faster than they were. She killed two of the six with loud blasts and the rest ran off. They were good sized beasts, still roughly lizard-like, but about the size of a wild boar and similar tusks to boot. They looked like a warped cross between a gila monster and a warthog.

"Oh look! LOTS of meat for my handy sub-space pack," Lancer jeered. "And we can finally work on ending your days as a nudist! Won't that be grand?"

He just stood there, staring vaguely in the same direction they'd been going, just as he had when the pack had rushed them from around a dune. She snorted and started butchering her kills, doing her best to keep the tough skin in one piece.

" I'm slicing this poor beast up for your benefit," she tried meanly.

His cloudy eyes finally turned to her, which she regarded as a victory, until he answered her.

"You might as well stop that Lancer. I know you're just being nasty to keep me moving because you think it will help me survive. I want you to stop. Go on without me. I'm not going to fall for that anymore."

Her heart sank, but she didn't let on. "Oh trust me, I can get under your skin dear. I have skills."

He shook his head ever so slightly. Obviously someone had plans to test her skills. She decided to camp and process the meat right where they were. Meat was spread out in strips on large, heated rocks to cook and dehydrate. She carved a cooking bowl out of a fairly large stone and set the organs to boil. Tendons were carefully cleaned too. She wasn't entirely sure it was possible cure the leather with nothing but her powers, but she was able to use them to clean and dry the skin to the point she was reasonably sure they wouldn't start to stink.

" I also have skills at laser hair removal – haven't needed to tweeze my eyebrow since my powers kicked in!"

"Those aren't hairs," Rodimus pointed out flatly.

Lancer gave Rodimus a sour expression. "Do you know what these critters are?"

"No."

"Then you don't know what these spiky things are either. Therefore they are hairs because I say so and because they stink when I burn them," Lancer instructed primly.

"Everything smells when you burn it," Rodimus noted.

" Including you. I know. I've done it. Until you start contributing more to my life than murder attempts and criticism you don't get to name things. Naming privileges and the right to be a whiny bastard come with being useful."

Rodimus' eyes flashed for a second and she thought maybe she had him, but he shook his head an sat down on a rock. It wasn't long before she could tell he was no where on this world with her. As usual she debated with herself. Should she try to bring him around? Was this part of the healing process? Going over and over her possession was certainly one of her major hobbies. Indeed, it had been her only hobby for weeks until Silva convinced her learning to kill people was another engaging way to occupy her time. Lancer just wasn't sure that even if perpetual flashbacks were a **normal** part of this process, that they were a useful/healthy part of it.

In the mean time, she flipped her stinky meat, kept the rocks glowing, the water boiling, and an eye on Rodimus. She pulled out her music player and unplugged the headphones. It wasn't a surround sound system, and the volume wasn't much, but the music played clearly. She put it next to Mr. Personality and went to see about making him something to wear. She found her hides to be drying well, but very stiff. Relying on half remembered lessons from pioneer days in elementary school, she got a couple of rocks and started pounding those bitches into submission. If nothing else, she hoped to be too tried to pound Rodimus into submission the next time he said something pissy. At least in his immobile state, she was able to get fairly descent measurements of his body without touching him, although she did have to take her own armor off to get a better idea of how the pieces should fit together. Funny how you put on clothes daily and never paid any attention to the actual odd shapes they were made from.

Hmm...Nowhere near enough dead critter for a full suit, but some shorts were doable, and maybe sort of a partial vest. She could save the scraps for later.

Shorts first. Priorities.

Rodimus drifted from one state to the next all day that day. Mostly he went over and over his time with the Jabez. He was never really sure what would pull him back to the cold, crude campsite once in a while, but he didn't really let it show when something did. Between episodes of the horror movie in his mind he got flashes of the stubborn woman he was stuck with. Tending the rancid meat he would be expected to eat soon. Doing odd, revolting things with sinew and skin. For a while she had her own clothing laid out on the ground next to the skins. Lots of muscle for a human woman. Lots of scars too. The long, reddish ones on her legs made him vaguely curious for a few minutes, if only because he knew from personal experience how hard it was to get the upper hand on her. There were so many...and they seemed to overlap each other. Whatever had done it had done so more than once. There were some over her shoulders too. And her arms. Then she happened to stand with her hands at her sides while she studied her armor. Her own hands lined up nicely with the scars on her legs.. Like the ones on her palms. Funny how she had never once cut him with those nasty nails of hers, but had clearly cut herself to ribbons more than once. It didn't take much for him to picture it...and then he spent a bit more time with the Jabez.

The next time he came around he was pretty sure it was because a song he used to like was playing next to him. Not that the song had changed, or even that his perception of it had changed. There was just nothing left in him to like things with. Lancer was cutting pieces of skin with a finely controlled laser, although she did have to stomp on a couple of small fires she started in the process. She gnawed laboriously on a strip of meat while she worked and the face she made told him she found it just as disgusting as he did.

All this labor for an ungrateful person. Why didn't she just let him go?

She held up her cut leather and he realized numbly that she was making him a pair of pants. When she brought it over to hold in front of him he made sure not to blink or turn his gaze. She compared his body to the skin she was holding. She looked into his eyes and frowned.

She chewed on her lip.

She waved her hand in front of his face.

She paced a bit in front of him, never looking away while she did.

She growled slightly to herself and bit her lip bloody with emerging fangs. The look on her face - shock, dismay, then anger. Not used to that. Frightened of it. Angry in her fear. She stomped away from him, holding her lip and swearing. The tail manifested, the horns grew...slowly...as if she was fighting it. He watched her feet split in half.

He stared, unblinking, and noted every detail. Like he had when they were pulling Goldbug's eye from it's socket...and his femur from his leg. No emotion in this state, just pure observation. He observed that this transformation was anything but natural and painless.

She threw her head back and roared at the sky. The tail lashed. The talons cut fresh lines into her thighs...into her shoulders. A lance blew from her palm and obliterated the west face of their campsite. Power crawled up and down her legs. Apparently not satisfied with the destruction she'd already inflicted on the landscape, she blasted the same area again and again. The noise reminded him of home...artillery fire, bombs, the music of war.

As suddenly as it began, the violence stopped. She stood, head cocked, in front of the smoldering ruin, as if curious where it came from. The marks of the demon withdrew back into her body as if absorbed and she curled up on the sand. She sat there, on her toes, knees, curled up, arms wrapped around knees, and staring into space for a while.

Same as him.

So they sat, each in their private hells, while the shadows changed angles and the cooking stones grew cold.

It was close to sundown when Rodimus came back to reality again. He found Lancer trying uselessly to patch up her own shoulder with the tube of skin glue. The wounds on her legs were already closed with ten long, erratic lines of stitches. He felt nothing, but he got up and walked over to her. The instant he moved her head whipped around and her hands came up in defense.

He ignored that and took the tube out of her hand.

"What do I do?"

She stared at him suspiciously.

"Just run a thin line down the cut and then pinch it together until it holds," she instructed slowly, watching him through narrow eyes.

" Is there going to be enough to do all of this?" he asked dubiously, waving the nearly flattened tube.

"Probably not," Lancer sighed. "And we're out of sutures, so no more deep wounds for either of us OK?"

" I'll start with the worst ones," he said. Easier said than done though. Looking at them to evaluate where to begin sent him flashing. He tried to fight it by pushing towards the cold, evaluating state he'd been in earlier, hoping to keep any emotion down and just see. Lancer knew why it took him so long to start and just waited, although she half expected One to turn up and attack her from behind.

She felt almost resigned to letting him, and then felt guilty. She had no more right to use him as a suicide device than he had to use her. Was there any more concentrated patch of fuckedupedness anywhere in the universe? She doubted it. Terror and despair gripped her though. This couldn't keep happening, but she had no clue how to stop it.

Finally his hands moved and it wasn't to strangle her. The tube scrapped along, the glue burned, and then he used the sides of both hands to compress the cut together. Lather, rinse, repeat. He got through the seven worst of them, and half way through the eighth. The cuts from her pinkie fingers were just going to have to heal on their own. He told her so.

"OK. Thanks," she said. She turned to look up at him. "You aren't going to ask what happened?"

" I saw," he said.

"You did?"

"Yes, but I couldn't...move...just then," he confessed.

"You couldn't have stopped me anyway, Rodimus. You have your moments. I have mine," she said.

"Yes," Rodimus agreed. "Why?" He sat down on a rock across from her.

"Why what?"

"Why do you have your moments?" he asked.

"Why do you care?" Lancer challenged.

" I don't," he started. Then he re-evaluated. " I don't...know."

"Well, I suppose that's progress," Lancer sighed. " I don't know if I can explain it very well. The words we use...they aren't...adequate."

Rodimus, considering what words he would need to use to try to describe what had happened to Goldbug, nodded. Words were useless.

"Ok...well. I'm sensitive to energy right?" Lancer started awkwardly.

"Um. Yeah. Got that," Rodimus said. Lancer noted a ghost of sarcasm there.

"Well, apparently that includes telepathic frequencies. I'm no telepath, but I'm sort of...open...to them. So, apparently there's a whole class of non-corporal entities that feed off of mental energies, and one of them found mine particularly tasty. It liked fear. So it crawled into my mind and took over. It...possessed me. It...owned me. I gave it the idea to shape my body into a demon's because that's what I took it for. It liked the fear the image gave me and liked the idea of terrifying my friends too. So it...pleasured itself...gorged itself on my pain while it used me to hurt them. It planned to kill them one by one, but it wanted to toy with them first to extend our suffering. That's the only reason they aren't all dead already. I was forced to watch. Forced to feel it's pleasure and their pain. It mutated my body, but what it did inside me was...there are no words for it." Her voice was cold, steady.

Rodimus just stared at her, expressionless, so she went on.

" It killed parts of my soul, Rodimus...and it made me see...: she trailed off, her eyes seeing nothing.

Rodimus caught himself wanting to wave his hand in front of her vacant eyes. Instead he prompted, "Made you see what?"

She turned her gaze to him, and he saw horror there, and unshed tears. "How much I resembled it. How guilty I was for letting it in...how...evil...I am."

"You don't like hurting things Lancer," Rodimus said, thinking of all the trouble she went to to spare him pain.

She laughed. "You're wrong Rodimus. I do. I like killing. I like it. Maybe not all the time, but you put a bunch of slave-running assholes in my way and I will kill them with joy. Knowing how wrong it is doesn't change the fact that hurting them makes me happy. So. I am...cursed. There's no redeeming that. It's thinking about how many of the Slavers, and the Sponsors, and the damned Jabez that are going unhurt right now that makes me unhappy!"

Rodimus' eyes narrowed to emerald slits. "Well...I guess that makes two of us that are un-redeemable."

She leaned forward and got right in his face. "Bullshit. You don't want to hurt them. You want to die remember?"

He just curled his lip at her in a hateful snarl.

"Suicide," she prodded. "Yeah they'll never get over it if you let yourself starve or fall into a pit. Or were you hoping they'd laugh themselves to death?"

He surged to his feet and stood over her, fists clenched and glowering.

She got up and walked across the camp to her cold cook stones. "OO...some signs of a warrior in there after all! Well Mr. Prime Sir, if you want revenge you're gonna have to work on it. Here," she crooned, whipping a piece of lizard-jerky at him. "Have some dinner."

He caught the meat, glared at it, glared at her, and ate it.

That day marked a turning point.

The dreams he had that night were the usual parade of nightmares, but there was one dream...one he remembered...of making some of the bleeding stop.

The next morning he helped Lancer pack up camp. To her amazement he even watched where he was walking.

It wasn't that Rodimus didn't suffer relapses into flashbacks and hallucinations – there were plenty of those for the rest of his life. There were even times when despairing Two took over and Lancer found it hard to get him moving. Hard...but not impossible. Part of his mind was simply snapped, but he had motivation to work around it, and an enthusiastic teacher leading the way.

After all, learning to kill things better had given her something to work towards.

Each morning she gave him a new skill to learn. The first took him two days to master. The fourth only a day. The sixth he had by noon and she gleefully showed him something new after lunch. He still found the food disgusting but he ate it or she wouldn't teach him. Mostly he just didn't argue with her because she held the next lesson in front of him like a carrot. Mostly. He didn't care for the stiff, unpleasant patchwork of hides she added to his attire daily.

"This...thing...you made me is rubbing my skin raw," he complained after one whole day of wearing it. The stylish pants Lancer had been planning hadn't come together quite like she'd hoped. The tendons she tried were too stiff to do more than a few rough ties with. She had big plans to try intestines next time, but that required more water than she could spare at the moment. In the mean time, Rodimus sported something that looked like a prop from a Tarzan movie.

"Aw...mighty Autobot has sensitive skin. So very sorry. Actually, I'm relieved to no longer be traveling with a nudist," Lancer grinned.

"Ah. So this is more about making you feel comfortable?" Rodimus asked. Sarcasm. No doubt about it. Lancer was delighted.

"Of course it is, although I'm amazed your complaining. It's not like the sand getting into everything was doing you any good. I'm amazed you aren't thrilled to have something keeping that thing out of the breeze. Seriously Mr. Robot, didn't it bother you to have a random piece of meat flopping around all day?"

"From where I stand I've just traded one kind of chafing for another, but I was hoping we could actually do something about the...clothes. And no, the penis doesn't bother me any more than the rest of me being meat. The anatomy isn't THAT different...it's just softer, more painful, and impossible to put away," Rodimus snarled in exasperation.

Lancer stopped and stared at him.

"What...what do you use them for?" she asked finally.

"Same as you. You didn't know that?" Rodimus asked.

"That Transformers are hung?" she laughed. "Nope. My elementary school focused on the other kinds of guns you guys pack...oh...and running away. There was lots about running away." She grinned and muttered, "Maybe they were afraid if they told us, some of us would forget to run away."

This thought apparently led to others she didn't share with him. She was too busy laughing herself sick. Rodimus just stood there and watched her. He didn't smile exactly, but it was...surprising... to see this bossy, grim, mean, implacable bitch of an assassin doubled over with tears running down her cheeks.

"Bang, bang, bang!" she gasped. "The NOISE! No, nonono!" Really, the laughter was enough to tear her in two.

It took him a minute to place what she was thinking. "Yeah, no. It's just a circuit lock. There's no bouncing around like you guys do."

Lancer straightened a little and seemed to breathe a bit better, "Ah. That takes some of the fun out of it, but OK." She wiped her eyes, looked at his somewhat annoyed expression and fell completely apart again.

"At least we can control our own damned bodies. We don't act like animals in heat and the equipment isn't all out and in the way unless we need it!" Rodimus felt a bit defensive all of a sudden.

Lancer straightened up and hid her face behind both hands. She inhaled and exhaled very deliberately a few times before speaking. "That takes some of the fun out of it too," she managed finally. "So who's missing your equipment while your stuck here Rodimus?"

He just blinked at her blankly.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" she tried again. More blinking. "Boyfriend?"

"No...no one like that," he said finally.

"Really? With your status I figured you'd be Prime goods...pun definitely intended," she was still grinning a bit madly.

"Yeah. But before that I was nobody and the crush I had on Arcee was never happening. She and Springer are life mates, even if they won't admit it. There were a few Paradronian girls who...um...asked...but they were all..." He paused.

"All what?" Lancer prompted.

"Stupid," Rodimus frowned. "Stupid...or just looking for some kind of prestige because I was Prime. I didn't want to be alone, but I didn't want to be used like that either. I think it's easier for us. We want love...we want pleasure...but we can wait. Time isn't a factor. There's no biological clock. There's no huge drive to breed because we don't breed."

"Right," Lancer said. " I get that I guess, but in that case, why do you have that at all. It makes no sense to me. You are a completely alien species from humans, you come from a different world, and you're even made from a completely different substance. Why in the hell would you all just happen to have all of the same bits and pieces filling roughly the same rolls, in all the same locations as a bunch of upstart monkeys that clawed their way from the ooze on Earth? Especially since you don't breed!"

" I...I have no idea," Rodimus admitted. He was a bit stunned by the obviousness of this question. Why had none of them ever asked? That question wanted to spawn a whole fleet of others but he was suddenly distracted. "Does all this mean we aren't going to do something about the chafing?"

Lancer laughed some more. "We'll work on it this evening," she smiled.

In the days following, Lancer tried a few more times to talk about the similarities between humans and Transformers. She finally gave up. He would get the same shocked look on his face every time she brought it up, but moments later something would distract him. He was starting to complain of headaches too. She wondered if it was something to do with his trauma that he couldn't seem to focus on it for more than a few minutes, and decided it wasn't worth setting him back.

It was odd though, because sometimes when he focused on something he locked on like a crocodile and didn't let go. Other times he seemed to just have mental blocks over dumb stuff. Certainly he was chewing through her assassination techniques with gusto. He mastered new moves nearly as fast as she could throw them at him. He was fast, accurate, and deadly serious about learning them. At the same time, he had some unlearning to do. Stealth was not part of his mindset. Neither was dodging attacks. Reliance on his former armor was really a problem. He didn't even seem to have the basic reflexes that made most people flinch away from a coming hit. There was also a horrendous tendency to pull his blows early she found frustrating. Not killing things was so deeply ingrained in his mindset and training she wanted to scream sometimes. So she did.

"No wonder your wars have gone on for fucking eons! Push THROUGH your target! Aim PAST their body and don't stop until you've hit the other side!"

Even though she could see the frothing desire for bloody vengeance swirling in his eyes, his attacks stopped short over and over.

" I'm TRYING," he'd insist.

"You're trying to drive me crazy," she snarled. "Which is stupid because I was crazy before you met me. Give it up and fucking hit me! Leave your stupid chivalry or whatever this is behind. I can take whatever you dish out and I've handled you in a fit often enough to prove it."

" I know that. It's not that," Rodimus vowed.

"Well what then?" Lancer growled.

" I...don't know." His eyes glazed over in that way she hated. " I'll do better."

But he didn't, and she got frustrated and went after him a bit harder than usual. This sparked off an attack from One, and for once Lancer didn't try to immediately subdue him. She fought him and evaluated him while she did. He used exactly none of the things she'd been teaching him – being completely immersed in a time before he knew her. The hate on his face was as complete and genuine as any she'd ever seen.

He still pulled his punches.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * A few days later:

"What's this all about?" Lancer hissed, stomping around like an angry toddler.

Rodimus rolled his eyes.

"Are you trying to punish this world for your problems Sir? I assure you, it is not the ground's fault you're a red-headed idiot. Although I do finally agree with Silva on how you got Chosen. You'll call attention to us for every predator within miles."

This earned her two raised eyebrows.

"Yeah, she took one look at you the day the news broke and proclaimed that you were chosen to blind the enemy and distract them from other targets," Lancer informed him truthfully.

"Silva was your teacher...so she taught you how to be mean too did she?" Rodimus said.

"Nope. The demon did that. Now, explain to me why I can't get you to follow through on a single hit unless it happens to be your feet aiming at the ground as you walk. Maybe I should try laying down the next time we spar to see if you'll put your weight into it then," Lancer mused.

"Oh yes, let's do that," Rodimus snarled softly back at her. He had a headache and felt particularly close to flashing. On the one hand, he was fully invested in this "learn to kill better and get revenge" thing. On the other, her complete dominance over him when they trained and her constant criticism of all of his former training were getting old. He was beginning to associate her questions about such things with migraines.

"Well, stop it! Control your footfalls for pity's sake! You complain about how out of control your body is, but I have to remind you to pee when most people would be having accidents. You have more control over your body than most of us who are born this way do."

" I don't see what you're worried about. You like it when we get attacked because you don't have to go looking for things to hunt," Rodimus reasoned.

"So you think that makes it OK to call attention to us?" Lancer smiled.

He knew by now that smile meant pain was coming.

" I didn't say that," he tried.

She fluttered her eyelashes at him flirtatiously, "Oh please, Kind Sir, do explain what you meant to little old me."

He sighed, and decided to just keep walking, alert for whatever she might do.

It didn't matter. She flew soundlessly into the air behind him and landed on his shoulders in a handstand before he knew she was in motion. The hands on his shoulders clamped and her momentum as she landed in front of him pulled him down and over her body in a sort of dual somersault. The end resulted with him looking up at the sky...and her glowering face as she stood over him. Breathing was suddenly very painful too.

"New policy. Since you think being noisy is fine and getting us attacked is no big deal, I am going to get you to appreciate the dangers of being a target. I know your former paint job made that a way of life for you and all. Every time you act like a target, I am going to oblige you by targeting you. Deal? Lay there and wheeze if that's a deal...oh good!" She smiled that fangy grin again. "Maybe we can get you to dodge once in a while we're at it. Of course there's no danger to me because you won't hit a girl...or a human...or anyone really."

Rodimus knew to take her at her word.

He got better at walking quietly by the end of the first day.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Their lives grew into a kind of strange routine.

She'd check his wounds. He'd (awkwardly) check hers.

They'd walk.

She'd hunt while they walked. Anything that called attention to itself was fair game, which mostly meant Rodimus got decked a lot. Every once in a while he'd get a shot or two in on her, which earned her a bruise, and him praise. Mostly though she left him wondering how anyone on either side of the Transformers war bothered to call themselves a fighter. He knew he was faster and stronger than she, but she rarely made herself available for striking.

He realized he was very used to enemies that didn't dodge or follow through any better than he did. Thinking about it too much always made his head hurt though, so mostly he focused on doing better.

They'd camp near sunset.

She'd cook if she'd found something, or they'd eat dried meat if not. The local plant life was still sparse and still more work to chew than they'd be worth nutritionally. Every kill added to his wardrobe too and the skins were making their own kind of camo-patchwork of different shades of tough, scratchy, tannish hides.

If she had something to work on like food or his clothing she took care of that first. He'd spar with phantoms while she critiqued from some rock or another making jerky or adding another section of dead animal for him to chafe against the next day. While she sewed and cursed she told him about their enemies. The Slavers, the Sponsors, the Jabez at the heart of it all. It shocked him...over and over. That so many systems were involved. That this was an integral part of the fabric of commerce and politics throughout every known system...including Earth! Including Cybertron! Cybertron...HIS territory. His home! To hear the Slavers had been using it as a truck stop for centuries – right under his nose. Of course it was easy enough to believe **HE** could have screwed up that badly, but what about Optimus? Magnus? Kup? Even Shockwave who had been Cybertron's guardian since before the Ark crashed...HE wouldn't have allowed lowly organics to lay over on Cybertron either, especially since they pirated precious energon and resources when there were none to spare.

How could ALL of them have missed something so...so...fundamental?

Rodimus learned to train with a near constant migraine. It worried Lancer, but it didn't stop her from beating the crap out of him. She practically glowed (OK...sometimes she literally glowed) with pride every time he managed to hit her. At least she seemed to take teaching him more seriously than defeating him.

Over the course of several days (and numerous flashbacks) she told him about her friends, and what they were trying to do.

She told him how Claudia had followed an intense source of fear with her empathy while traveling with Jordan. He had suffered from a rare form of cancer, and lost his empathy as a result – effectively rendering him a deaf/mute to most of his species means of communication. Claudia had hoped to show him how the rest of the universe functioned without it...or at least to distract him from his depression. Their "pleasant adventure" had gone horribly wrong.

They were on Monacus, enjoying the lights and the gambling. Jordan had gone to grab dinner for them the moment Claudia felt the terror...a child's. She'd followed it to its source - really expecting nothing more than a lost youngling. Instead she'd stumbled onto a slaving operation. The child she'd sensed was the only victim the slave runners hadn't Converted...because somehow raping a CV was less satisfying than raping a terrified little kid. She'd sensed the evil the slavers were projecting early enough, but she didn't know about emotionless CVs. She was already within the ring of their security when she realized what was happening and tried to fly for help. A telekenetic sentry CV simply immobilized her the instant she'd tried to take off.

Her punishment for spying was to join the child in the gang rape. Her non-human body was in no way suited for what they did to her. Her wings were crushed by their weight, her hollow bones broke all over her body, her pelvic area split in two, and the concussions she suffered damaged the control centers in her brain that allowed her to turn her empathic sensitivity up or down.

In a way this saved her. The entire region, including the slavers, was suddenly assaulted with her terror and pain. There was mass hysteria within a 3 mile radius, and the local authorities had found her in their attempts to quell the panicking citizens. None of the slavers even resisted arrest – they were all found in fetal positions, mostly covered in their own urine.

It was too late for the child she had tried to save. He died on the way to the hospital. Claudia eventually healed physically, but her wings needed to be amputated and her empathic controls were damaged beyond repair. It made their nameless home-world lost to them. An out-of-control empath would be deafened by the constant, wordless exchanges of their species. They were exiles.

While Claudia recuperated, Jordan battled with the local bureaucracy. Yes, the perpetrators were all well and truly punished by being hit by their own victim's pain. Yes, none of them would likely ever recover, but what about all the other victims? The dead-minded people? What were these men up to with all of them? Who were they?

It hadn't taken him long to realize that the local authorities knew exactly what these answers were and planned to do nothing about it. He also realized that meant he and Claudia were liabilities.

No warrior, knowing no one, and with nothing but their travel bags, Jordan had precious few options..except money.

So he recklessly walked into the most dangerous looking bar he could find and announced he needed to hire some muscle. He could have easily been mugged, swindled, or wasted his money on incompetent mercenaries. Instead what he hired (more with his desperation and earnestness than with his cash) was Silva. The metallic assassin was WAY out of his price range, but she didn't tell him that until later. She was currently unemployed, bored, and a sucker for challenge and intrigue. The minute she stood up everyone else in the bar who might have seen an easy mark sat right back down.

Jordan frantically told her everything on the way to the hospital where Claudia still rested in serious condition. The more he talked, the more intrigued...and angry Silva got. She believed in clean kills...clean warfare. Honor and necessity. Money being a necessity of course, but still...nothing in Claudia's abuse was clean.

Silva was angry before they got to Claudia's room, which only gave the throat strike she gave to the hit man standing over the bed when they got there a bit of extra force. Sirens were wailing before they even alerted the nurses. Not a good sign the police were coming to aid them. Jordan grabbed a chair and smashed the window out. Then he grabbed Claudia, bed sheets, I.V.s and all, and flew her down to the street.

Silva had no wings...so she simply jumped out of the fourth story window and landed next to Jordan on the street. Her legs sunk nearly a foot into the pavement which bothered her. Punching through the surface that way got her dirty and all.

She whispered an address and a password into Jordan's ear and covered his escape with smoke bombs and hand to hand mayhem which left about a dozen local police dead or in a conveniently located hospital. Meeting up with Jordan about an hour later, she found him in her local safe-house, getting his first on-the-spot medical training as he struggled with Claudia.

It wasn't until after a few weeks of teamwork, where Jordan researched online and in local libraries, and Silva shook down snitches and local heavies, that Jordan thought to ask Silva when his first payment would run out. That was when she told him it had run out before he paid her, but that she wouldn't be collecting.

Their search for answers led them to several other worlds and along the way they ran into Talon, who was making himself a problem for them by beating up the guys Silva wanted to talk to before she could beat them up. Robert was supplying and piloting the ship the boys were using to get away from places where Talon "asked nicely." The two of them were wanted on several planets already for a string of bombings in warehouses and shuttle ports. Their first encounter with Silva ended with a stalemate where Silva had Talon's throat between her steely hands, and Talon had his finger on the kill switch of a live grenade.

It might have ended quite badly then and there had Claudia not stumbled, shrieking with pain and fear, off Silva's shuttle to vouch for Talon. Working together seemed like a no-brainer since the more they found out, the more they all realized how...huge...this network of evil was.

They kept Silva's shuttle, sold Robert's, and made a name for themselves causing mayhem. On paper they were all wanted criminals. Most of the local governments were on the take, if not outright run by high quality CVs. They survived by being fast and secretive...clean, as Silva liked it. She was the nominal leader because she had the most training, although Talon must have had some too. Where he got it or what it was he never shared, but his way with explosives made it pretty clear it was Terran military of some sort.

Keeping their identities secret, even from each other, was another no-brainer. When your enemies could read everything you knew if they Converted you, you didn't talk a lot about the loved ones you left behind. If the original team ever knew each others' real names back in the beginning, they never shared them with Lancer. All of the non-Terrans on the Maelstrom chose Terran words for names. Pagan liked to joke that it was so Robert wouldn't embarrass himself trying to pronounce something in their own languages.

Nevertheless, as clean as they were, none of them could do anything about having their minds read. The day came when they were all resting in one of Silva's Super Secret Safehouses when Kain let himself in and announced he was hiring them to rescue his sister from a Jabez research installation.

They had, in fact, rescued Pagan...and lifted the newly minted Maelstrom in the process. The Jabez that had been holding her had studied her teleportation powers to build them into the ship. It was the only non-Drazi that could fold space along gravitational lines like she did.

"When did you join in?" Rodimus asked.

"Years after the core team got started," Lancer shrugged. "Malice and I were part of a shipment of mutant slaves...fresh from Earth. We were lucky...if you can call it that. Low ranking captives usually get the chip shortly after capture, but she and I were "quality" catches. They were saving us for auction. They slapped inhibitor collars on us and left us in lock-up." Lancer sneered. "Yeah, they didn't rape us or anything because bruises might have cost them a few bucks. They saved that for one of my high school classmates who was pretty, but not a mutant. We got to watch though. Malice and I didn't know each other, but you sort of bond when you are seventeen and have no one else to cling to while a bunch of assholes lobotomize a bunch of kids in front of you and rape a girl to death. They had us a few days before the Maelstrom caught up with them."

Lancer grinned that demonic grin. "Rob and the ship pinned their ship down with the tractor. Talon blew a hole in the hull and two of the jerks got sucked into the void before the decompression shields kicked in. Pagan teleported Silva and Jordan in, and the three of them just started slaughtering. Silva made Jordan a long, double ended spear years ago. His people aren't warriors, but with his empathy down, and everything he's seen happen to Claudia...yeah. He whirls that thing while he flies and heads and limbs just go every which way. Oh and Silva. Man, Rodimus. I wish you could have met her. She was such a good teacher...she would have done right by you...and when she fought. Those silver legs would start her across a room and by the time she reached the other side all the bad guys were dead or dying. I was just a terrified little girl that day, but watching those horrible men go down at her shiny hands was just about the prettiest thing I ever saw. I should have been terrified of them. All these weird aliens. Pagan just comes in and uses those scaly hands to smash and slash. She hits men with her tail and they're done. Talon came down a few minutes after the rest and started mopping up with a good old laser blaster. Merciless. I didn't care. I was so very happy to see someone taking those assholes out."

Rodimus didn't answer her right away. His eyes clouded over and she was pretty sure he was remembering the kids he saw "get the chip" while bound and helpless too.

Finally he saw her again. "What happened to Silva?"

Lancer swallowed and looked away. "She...she was our teacher you know? Especially for me and Malice. We were so young and stupid. Well...Malice. Malice is a bad code-name for Malice. Her powers are awesome, but she never...had the heart for it. She wants the husband/kids life even though we all know a Class One Telekinetic is always going to be a target. So when some guy comes along and promises her that...normalcy...she just jumped for it. Seriously I don't know if Kendall started off as genuine or if he was a ringer from the start. They met when we were taking a shore leave between runs and got all lovey dovey. It was sorta sweet, I guess. Next thing we know they've gone and gotten married over the course of a weekend...and she gets pregnant right off too."

Lancer rolled her eyes. "So Malice tells us she quits and moves in with the guy...and the rest of us pointing out she's got no background on this guy and no security andandand...and it just rolled right off her. She was happy and she was done. Silva was fit to be tied. We couldn't stop her though, so we left one of Robert's Com-eyes behind with her and tried to keep tabs on them. It was all good for like a year. Evan Ryan was born...he was healthy, and the lovely dovey got even lovelier. Silva and I checked on them like five times a day at first, but we relaxed a bit..."

Lancer sighed, sewed, and looked sad. "Like I said, we don't know if Kendall was always shady or if something got to him. He wasn't converted, but a high grade empath or telepath can make things happen too. We were still checking on them, but only once a day at that point. We looked one evening and everything is all rosy and the next afternoon the house is pretty much exploded from the inside out. That's one of Malice's signature moves by the way. Turns out someone was paying top dollar for Evan...we don't know if it was for his genetics or as ransom for Malice. Class One telekinetics are about the rarest, most sought after CVs you can buy. Evan had the potential. Either way, his own father was the delivery man.

We caught up with Malice and helped her take back her kid from this auction house. They were ready for us...or at least ready enough for trouble. It was a long, long fight. About 12 hours. Lots of muscle came at us. Lots of high ranked CVs too. Somewhere in there Kendall died...not sure how or who. Personally, I think it was Silva. She had it in for him from the start. Evan Ryan suffered massive radiation damage which has mangled his DNA to the point he'll never have kids or grow up mentally. It was injected into him by the bad guys before we could rescue him. I guess it was an 'if we can't have him no one can' kind of thing. He'll never be normal and Malice will certainly never be the same. It was...not one of our shining moments. We were all injured one way or another, everyone was freaked out over what happened to Malice's baby...we were all focused on him and her. Even Claudia didn't notice right away that Silva died during the fight. Too much emotional overload for Claudia to notice one heart was silent. We brought Silva's Convert back to the Maelstrom with us. Robert noticed when he caught her trying to tamper with Sigma Beta."

Rodimus' eyes narrowed. "What's...what's Sigma Beta?"

"One of the two main crystal computers on the Maelstrom," Lancer mumbled. She had a piece on sinew between her teeth while she tried to tie another patch of skin to his uneven sleeve. "They look like a pair of humongous disco balls. You need sun-glasses to be in the room with them. They pretty much run the whole ship, which is great because none of us know what the fuck to do with it."

Rodimus' eyes got really, really green – a fact Lancer was a bit surprised by. He handled the whole story with Silva's conversion pretty well. This was upsetting him? She pulled out her music player and pulled out the battery/memory crystal.

"See? They look like this little thing...only they're each like the size of a car and they float," she said, showing him the crystal. It looked precisely like the Matrix...only smaller.

This time, when One attacked her, he used one of the knife-hand strikes she was teaching him...and he followed through. Lancer had mixed feelings about this. The strike he used was designed to break **into** someone's body. Fortunately, she had her armor on. He hit her so hard he cracked her ribs, knocked the wind out of her, and she had to zap him to bring him down. He was going to be challenging to manage if this kept up. On the other hand, it meant his training was finally becoming instinctive.

Later, as he bound her ribs with strips of dead animal, she heaped praise on him between curses of pain.

"You're as crazy as I am...you know that right?" he snapped.

"You're just now figuring that out?" she asked.

Continued in Marooned: Part D


	4. Chapter 4

Maelstrom Chapter 7.5

Marooned: Part D

Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original **Maelstrom Comics** and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http/ illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.

This chapter takes place between the comic issues #7 and #8.

 **Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, trauma, and sex. Rated M for adult themes!**

 **Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!**

Continued from Marooned: Part C

Later, from somewhat of a safe distance, Lancer tried to get a confession out of Rodimus.

"What set you off?"

"Aren't you afraid you might 'set me off' again by asking?" Rodimus snapped. He had been stewing all evening. Not zoning out. Not staring into the past; actively, alertly stewing. He was watching the meat cook and he hadn't let a single strip burn, even though he liked it better that way.

" I paid the price for complacency. I figured I could handle One because he always attacks the same way basically. I won't assume that again," Lancer explained.

Rodimus frowned at her. "'One?' 'He?'"

Opps. She was forced to confess her numbering system.

"Oh that's just great. First I'm 'Hamburger Man' and now I'm a sequential lunatic."

"Hey. It helped me handle you, and you're getting better so give me a break," Lancer chuckled. This made her grab her ribs and hiss.

" I already gave you a break," Rodimus pointed out sourly. "So which am I now?"

Lancer cocked her head at him and smirked. " I dunno. I suppose it depends on whether you answer my question at all, and upon which way you chose to avoid it if you do. If you attack me again you'll either be One or Three depending on whether you see me or the Jabez when you do. If you go off and sulk you'll be Two. If you actually tell me what you've been thinking about all evening you'll still be Four, Four."

"You're making fun of me," Rodimus complained.

"Do you see anyone else around here to make fun of? What's a girl to do?" Lancer grinned with just a hint of fangs.

"What if I don't attack you or zone out on you, but decide not to answer you anyway?" Rodimus asked with a sneer.

"Oh that's easy. You'll still be Four, but you'll also be an asshole," Lancer informed him sagely. " I'm really looking forward to hearing whatever is worth this really long dodge though, so I'm not going to let it go because of the fight you're trying to pick with me. Don't get me wrong, we can fight if you want to, and then you can tell me about it when we're done."

He glared daggers at her.

She grinned at him.

He glared. She grinned.

He sighed and rolled his eyes.

" I'm not sure what I should tell you...I'm not sure about anything right now Lancer!" Rodimus confessed.

Her grin turned into a more compassionate smile. " It's OK. I promise not to hold any mistakes you make against you. I'm really just trying to understand so I don't set you off again Rodi," she said.

He flinched visibly.

"What? What did I do now?" she asked.

"You called me Rodi," he told her.

She shrugged and looked blank.

"My friends call me that," he said.

"And I'm not a friend. Sorry. I won't do it again," Lancer said.

"No...I didn't mean...Oh slag it!" Rodimus threw his hands up in frustration. " I don't know what the hell you are!"

" I am the woman who is just dying to hear what's on the other side of all this stalling," Lancer said. The grin was back.

"You are a bitch," Rodimus said definitively. When she raised her eyebrows but kept grinning he finally answered.

" I think there's a connection between my peoples' origin and the Jabez and it's really freaking me out."

" I knew this was gonna be good," Lancer said seriously. "What makes you even think that?"

"Your music crystal. It looks just like the Matrix! And the computers on the Maelstrom...they sound just like Vector Sigma! I shouldn't be telling you this...I don't know you. This should be classified if it's true," Rodimus said. " I'm sorry. I don't mean to be offensive, but..."

"But sometimes I forget you're the head honcho of a planetary government and military organization. I'm sorry. I don't think in terms of clearance and protocols. OK Mr. Prime. Forget I asked. We Maelstrom people are used to doing pretty much whatever the fuck we want, but we do understand the importance of secrets," Lancer said.

Rodimus just stared at her.

" It's OK," Lancer assured him. "You won't hurt my feelings. I told you, my friends don't even know my actual name. I would never betray you on purpose, but Conversion is absolutely a security risk. Even my parents think I ran away. I feel badly about that. I'd like to tell them that I'm alright and that they didn't do anything wrong, but the truth...the truth is unlikely to make them feel any better."

"The truth is you are marooned somewhere in the universe with an idiot Prime," Rodimus snarked with a weird hitch in his voice that just might have been a derisive laugh.

"You're not an idiot. Damaged goods at most Rodimus," Lancer said, wagging a finger at him.

" I am. I'm here worrying about security clearance. My top officers, even Optimus, are all clueless about the Jabez, the slave trade, and the Sponsors. We think of ourselves as players on a universal stage and we don't even know the game. If we get back, I think I need to bring these great minds together so you can tell them what's what. What the hell am I worried about? I...still...wish you had left me to die, but I know you could have killed me any time these last weeks. If I can trust you with my life a bit of a history is a problem? I'm an idiot."

"Well, maybe just a little," Lancer managed. She reeled a bit internally. The phrase " If we get back" coming from Mr. Death-wish was a bit of a shock. "Will you tell me what you're thinking about so I can help?"

So he told her. Some of the things he said were public knowledge, but a lot of the details were not. She knew, for instance, that the Matrix was an Autobot relic passed down from one leader to the next, but that it housed the memories of the previous leaders and had a sort of consciousness of its own was new. News outlets on Earth had always made it out to be some kind of symbol of office that also happened to work as a power-booster for the bearer. She knew even less about Vector Sigma, other than the one line she read growing up and learning her alien...err...biology. "Vector Sigma is the super computer on Cybertron that programs all Transformers upon activation, Autobots and Decepticons alike." That it was also alive and self-aware confused Lancer.

"Why does it do that?" she asked when Rodimus was done describing it.

"Do what?" Rodimus asked.

"Why does it program you all to be enemies? I don't know. It seems so stupid. You get activated and your enemies are already picked out for you. You don't even get a chance to just piss off people along the way and make them yourself. It just seems stupid for it to set you up for mutual destruction from the get go," Lancer said.

Rodimus shrugged and rubbed his temple. " I don't know. That's just the way it is."

"Uh-huh. The 'way it is' is the reason you guys can't get your shit together. What a fucking waste of energy, resources, LOTS of fucking time, and oh yeah...the very lives the damned thing is throwing together."

"Never thought of it that way," Rodimus mumbled. His skin transformed from pale to bleached.

Lancer cussed. "You know it's hard for me to believe that given how fucking smart you are."

"Smart? Really? Cause right now I can hardly think at all. You are giving me a migraine again."

"Good. Maybe if your head hurts you'll start to use it!" Lancer snarled.

He threw her a nasty glare and went to go lie down.

That night it wasn't One that attacked her, it was Three. He crept up behind her quite quietly. It was close – she almost didn't hear him. Only a faint cascade of sand down the slope she was sitting on alerted her. She whipped her head around and clobbered him with her braid before he could cut her. Knocked him clean out. This was good because the grin she caught on his face the instant before she clobbered him was pure sadistic glee. He had one of her needle-knives from her pack, and he was savvy or lucky enough to have picked one of the poisoned ones.

Next day.

" I am really so sorry," Rodimus tried again.

"Uh huh. Sorry you missed you mean," Lancer huffed. She was checking his wounds, both the old and the fresh. He had a lovely pattern of round bruises across his cheekbones where her steel beads had nailed him.

"No. I really don't know what came over me. It was like the Hate Plague all over again. I was watching myself do things I knew were wrong but I couldn't stop."

"Oh it wasn't all wrong. You did a good job getting the knife without a sound but your foot slipped when you went to stab me. You were going to stab me, right? If you wanted to slit my throat you should have picked an edged blade or one of the wires," Lancer critiqued.

"This isn't funny you know. I almost killed you and you're giving me advise on it?!"

Lancer looked up from re-binding his checker board wound. "This thing is almost healed too. In another day or so it won't need a dressing." She restored his nerves and patted his hand.

He pulled away from her. "Come on Lancer! This is serious. Sometimes I think I'm not the only one around here with a death-wish."

She flinched a little and he was close enough to feel it as well as see it.

He stared at her and she chose to inspect the bruises on his face rather than meet his eyes. His hand snapped up and he grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look at him.

His eyes flared green. Hers – white.

" It's true, isn't it?" Rodimus accused. He was angry at her for some reason.

"No. Well, sort of. No. I don't know. Does it count as a death **wish** if you just don't care or is that more of a death-doesn't-give-a-shit?"

"Lancer..."

"Rodimus? What do you want from me? I'm doing my best here and I know I suck at it, but it's all I've got! Do you seriously think I know what to do for you? You're sick. It's not your fault and I don't want to go all ballistic on you over it. I make jokes about it because I don't want to make you feel more guilty. OK? I want you to get better. I hope you make it. Even if you kill me I hope you make it."

"Lancer..."

"Look! I'm sorry. Claudia would have been able to help you. Or Silva if she was alive. Hell, even Talon might have been better. At least he's military trained and he's not as dumb as he wants us all to think." She rubbed her eyes. "Sorry. Sand."

"Sand. Sure. Look, I don't think you should train me anymore," Rodimus said. " I'm getting better and you're exhausted. It's not going to matter if you have a death-wish or not if I kill you...and I'll never forgive myself if I do."

"Fuck that. Fuck your fucking guilt. You listen here dipshit! You are a VICTIM...and I don't mean in the helpless 'now I'm wounded forever' kind of way. I just mean this crap was inflicted on you. You seem to think this guilt is somehow your sane response and I'm telling you it's just as much of a symptom of your sickness as the rest."

"Seems to me I've heard this saying on Earth...something about pots and kettles... hmmm."

"NOT the same situation Wiseass. The Jabez hurt you, hurt Goldbug, and drove you insane. They did not crawl into your mind and corrupt your soul. You can get better. You are already better. Nothing is going to fix me. I just want my life to balance out a bit on the good side before I finally lose it. Sometimes I wonder how bad it's going to be and wonder if I am doing the right thing breathing one more day. So if you kill me it's no big loss right? Don't worry about it. Just think of it as a good start before you get home and start taking on the bad guys again," Lancer grinned.

"A good start?! You've got to be kidding me. Lancer you're not a Decepticon! Or a Jabez! We're done training! We're done!" Rodimus exclaimed.

" It's so cute when you think you have a choice Honey. Today we start knife training. If you're going to play with my weapons I want to make sure you know which ones to slice with and which stab."

" I wasn't..." Rodimus paused, grew pale, and shook his head.

They got moving for the day, but he refused to talk to her through most of it...not even when she put a knife in his hand. He listened. He learned. He defended himself when she sparred with him, but he wouldn't attack. He also wouldn't answer her repeated demands to tell her what was wrong.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * That evening when they got done setting up camp she saw him staring off into space. Her eyes focused on his and saw green, not that dull blue he got when Two was dominant. Experimenting, she grab a small stone and threw it right at his face.

His hand blurred as he caught it.

"What The Fuck, Lancer?" Rodimus Prime growled.

"OOO! I taught you to swear like a proper human! I was just seeing if you were really zoned out or just stewing," she told him cheerfully.

"So if you'd been wrong I'd have taken a shot to the face?"

"Yup," she chirped.

"There is something very wrong with you," Rodimus informed her.

"You are finally catching on," she grinned.

"Well, you have my attention, which you obviously wanted, so I ask again. What the fuck?" Rodimus sighed.

"How many Decepticons have you killed?" she demanded.

"Killed?" he thought about it. " I killed some Sharkticons on Quintessa...I haven't killed any Decepticons though."

"Not even through orders to your team?"

"No...they're not that easy to kill you know," he insisted defensively.

"So you can kill Sharkticons, and you go after me with glee, but none of your traditional foes have died on your watch? What's wrong with this picture?" Lancer challenged.

Rodimus surged to his feet and glared at her. The pain in his head erupted behind his eyes...she could see it. His hands balled into fists that could crush her as easily as if he were still steel.

"You ready to attack me yet? Pick up you knife! Come on! You were ready to stab me yesterday!"

He flinched and shuddered, and shook his head before he could stop himself.

"My turn," Lancer said. "What the fuck is wrong Rodimus?"

" I wasn't..." he turned away from her and started shaking. Sinking to his knees he grabbed his head like he was trying to keep it from exploding.

She knelt down next to him and awkwardly rubbed his back. "You weren't what?"

He inhaled sharply. " I wasn't going to stab you. I wanted to do...things...to you." His eyes clipped slightly to the left to glance at her and then flicked away again. There were tears there...tears of horror and guilt.

"Things? What sorts of things?" Lancer whispered.

"You needle-knife...it looked sort of like a stylus. I was planning to...draw. On you. Designs. I could see them in my mind. Patterns between your scars. Killing you was part of it...you would have died...but not. Not right away. I was very into how beautiful it was going to be." The hand on his back slowed down for a second, but never stopped.

"You wanted to torture me?" Lancer asked. Her voice was steady.

"No. Well, yes, but the pain was sort of secondary. The designs...they were the important thing. By the Matrix...I can never go home!" Rodimus declared. " I can't...bring this back to them!"

"Rodimus, you'll get better," Lancer insisted. "You need to warn them, and you need to teach them to really fight. If the Jabez are planning to come for them, they can't just fluff along like they have been. For their sake...for the rest of the universe too. Believe me once they're Converts they won't pull their punches!"

" I'm afraid! I'm afraid of me! What will Optimus say? That I've let him down again? That I've become a monster who wants to draw bloody designs on a woman's body? You say your demon corrupted you? The Jabez have done the same to me!"

The hand on his back reached around his shoulders and held. She put her forehead on his other one and just rested it there for a minute or two.

Finally she heaved a long, stuttering sigh, and spoke.

"You're an idiot."

" I'm a psychopathic idiot," Rodimus corrected.

She punched him with her other hand without ever releasing her embrace.

"You see yourself completely backward do you know that?" She didn't look up but she felt him shake his head. "When you talk about the Jabez do you know what I hear about? I hear about Goldbug. You talk in your sleep about what they did to him. You talk to me about what they did to him. It's like you pay no attention at all to what they did to you. They tortured your mind Rodimus. They went after your body and his for sure, but they wanted to break **your** mind. You're worried about how crazy you are and I'm amazed how crazy you **aren't**."

"Lancer...I tried to murder you slowly," he reminded her.

"Not to mention creatively. It all sounds quite artistic by the way. Maybe we should get you something to paint with," she mused with a bit of a chuckle.

She felt him shrug and shake his head, mystified by her responses. She turned her head sideways and tried to pull him closer. She had to make him understand...she had to make him believe her.

"Rodimus...I've seen more Jabez handiwork than I ever want to recall. The people they Convert are the lucky ones. The ones they...play with... Yeah. You're a mess, but you're letting me touch you right now. Do you even remember your first night with me? How the least contact made you react? Most of the victims we 'save' never get past that. Not ever. We drop them off on their respective home-worlds and they spend the rest of their lives recoiling from any contact at all in whatever passes for an asylum in their culture. The few we find who are more like you, the fighters, they never get better either. They don't curl up and scream like most people do, they attack everything they can like rabid beasts. Forever. You spoke to me the first day, you're walking, you're helping me make camp, you're learning. You're fucking amazing," Lancer told him.

"But..."

"Shut up with that shit. I'm not done yet. I'm not afraid of you. NO! Not a word! I'm not stupid Rodimus. You aren't completely better and you'll probably try to take it out on me again, because really, what else is there? I'm saying it's no surprise you want to hurt something. What **IS** a surprise is that you haven't tried it more often. Look where we are! Look at your only healer! I have no drugs to calm you, no pain killers to soothe you, and no training to help you cope. This place sucks and we have next to nothing to make it suck less. Most men would be going nuts even if they hadn't been tortured and you are getting better. You had a prefect opportunity to kill me the other night in the storm and you just sat there asking if you could help. You have some scary symptoms, but I'm not afraid of *you*. You Are Amazing."

"Lancer?"

"Yeah?"

"Call me Rodi, OK?"

"OK Rodi. You ready to actually attack me with that knife yet?" she asked, giving him one more squeeze.

He sighed and gave one short laugh. " I really hate you sometimes you know."

" I know. En garde silly Autobot! Your courage and loyalty amaze me. Your fighting skills not so much."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * More days walking and training led them to an area that finally had some flora they could consume. Granted, it was nothing more than shrubs with tough, tasteless roots and pulpy leaves, but at least they had some minerals and a bit more vitamin content. Lancer was relieved when the scanner came up positive for vitamin C especially. She had been privately wondering how long it took to develop rickets. The soil was still mostly sand though, and the wind still made them curse it.

As for the local critters, they were becoming plentiful enough that Lancer didn't kill every one she saw. It all looked lizard-like to her – herbivore and predator alike.

"They don't seem to mind the cold, and they're warm when you kill them," Rodimus pointed out. "So they aren't reptiles."

"Have you figured out what they are yet?"

"Nope."

"Great. Shut up and keep your eyes open. More of them might mean bigger packs of the hunters or perhaps just bigger hunters," she warned.

"Uh-huh."

"Right. Next pack we meet, you are using some of those lovely new knife skills to help," she informed him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Early evening was a weird time on their lonely planet. The shadows were never all that strong in the wan sun, but towards dusk they grew ghostly with the silvery evening sky. Sometimes it was ethereal and sort of beautiful, but mostly Lancer made smart remarks about filming her next horror movie there.

This particular evening was one of the nicer ones, but neither was really appreciating it. The air had been growing fouler for the last hour or so, but now the wind had shifted and suddenly they were both miserable.

"What the hell is that REEK?" Lancer asked, gagging.

Rodimus held his nose and looked green. His eyes were watering. " Is there no way to turn your sense of smell down either?"

" I wish!" Lancer said. "Can you tell where it's coming from?"

Rodimus shook his head, unwilling to answer because it required inhaling. They both looked around more closely. Everything seemed pretty normal for this place. Lots of sand, a few random weeds, and a small pack of predators burrowing after lizards in the distance. They did notice however, when the wind shifted that way that the predators gave up their hunt and ran off.

"More intelligent than I thought," Lancer wheezed. "Hey you! I know it's awful but breath already! You're turning blue. Not your color!"

Rodimus inhaled...very cautiously. He held his breath again.

"You're nose will give up eventually! Stubborn ass. Breath! I'm climbing that big dune to get a look. It smells like a whole herd of something died. Come on."

They climbed, slipping a lot the whole way. Lancer chalked that up to nasal distraction as they were both expert dune climbers by this point. When they crested the summit it was only a bit higher than the rest of the desert behind them, but quite a bit higher than the smoother, greener plains on the other side.

"WHOO HOO!" Lancer cheered, raising both hands over her head. Off in the distance they saw larger "herds" of creatures grazing along the ground. "Awesome! We've made it to Kansas Toto!"

" I thought I was the Tin Man," Rodimus mused nasally. He still had his nosed pinched tight.

"Have you looked at yourself lately?" Lancer ribbed. To herself she thought, Was that a joke? I think that might have been a joke!

"Can we go?" he asked.

They started down the other slope. Lancer stepped off the top and felt her foot hit something hard under the surface. Before she could catch herself or warn Rodimus, he started down and lost his footing. Down he slid.

"What the...?" Lancer started when the whole dune exploded under her feet. She didn't fall so much as flew, launched into the air by something lifting itself out of the sand. She twisted like a cat in mid-air to land feet first and roll. The air was as impossible to breath or see through as one of the wind storms but this wasn't a storm. It was some kind of creature.

She heard it before she saw it, grumbling and groaning like an old tree in the blinding sand. The stench made her gag uncontrollably. Desperate to see what was there she tried using her powers to sense it's nervous system. It went on and on until it passed out of range. She found Rodimus that way too – very sensibly keeping low and backing away. Gravity gave her back her vision but it didn't help her process what she saw.

The body was roughly snake like with thick leg-like structures interspersed as far as she could see. It was at least a quarter of a mile long but it's back end was still buried in dune. The head rose above her like an obscene snake. Large nostrils and small eyes near the top of the skull, but at least three quarters of what she saw was teeth. Long, needle-like objects taller than she was. When its mouth was closed they formed an interlocking fence that reminded Lancer of baleen whales. When its mouth was open it was plain where the stench was coming from.

It had carcasses stuck in it teeth.

The head drew back and oriented on the closer prey - Rodimus. Lancer's sanity obliterated as quickly as her demonic horns erupted from her skull.

Screaming, she blasted at its face, only to see the bolt ricochet. It turned on her though and she screamed again – wordless, berserk, and well past any coherent thought. It followed. It struck. She went the only direction that didn't mean getting caught in those jaws – up. They clamped down on air while she landed on it's snout. It was pure instinct to aim at the brightest spot she saw in its nervous system. Her power formed a spear from her palm which she aimed at it's rudimentary eye into it's brain.

The thing didn't even squawk before it collapsed.

Lancer's demon was not so easily defeated. She kept attacking – blasting and clawing at the thing's face. Unsatiated, she jumped down and blasted it a few more times. The fists she made pierced her palms but when she went to claw her shoulders a pair of strong hands grabbed her from behind. What Lancer did with pressure points and clever leverage, Rodimus did by simple strength. He bound her arms across her body and brought them both to the ground, holding her in the same basket hold she'd used on him so many times.

"No...I won't let you hurt yourself," he said quietly in her ear. " It's over. You don't have anything left to fight right now. Come on...calm down."

She snarled, but she didn't try to bite him or blast him. Somehow that didn't surprise him.

He sat there with her long enough to learn that 1.) human noses do in fact get used to horrible stenches 2.) holding someone who didn't want to be held was harder than it looked and 3.) she deserved some kind of medal for doing this for him over and over. He rested his chin on her shoulder and waited.

Finally she gasped and stopped resisting. The horns faded and she turned her stunned eyes to look at him.

"Hi," he smiled. "You're back!"

"Are you crazy?!" she growled.

"Yup. Pretty sure we cleared that up already," he said.

"What if I'd tried to blast you?" she cried.

" I'd be dead, but I knew you wouldn't."

"You knew nothing of the sort! I can't **think** when I'm berserk Rodimus."

" I did know...and I have to say something to you," he said calmly.

"What is it you stupid, stupid, reckless, stupid Autobot?"

"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for holding me down...and for force feeding me. All of it. I don't...I don't want this...but I do appreciate that you've done so much for me. Also, death wish or no, I don't want to go that way." He nodded towards the steaming, stinking corpse across the battleground.

She didn't answer right away, but her taut muscles suddenly stopped resisting his hold.

Finally she just said, "Let me go."

He complied with some faint regret. Being the protector again felt...almost good.

Lancer, torn between being angry, grateful, and embarrassed, settled on the obscenely strange wildlife to avoid the whole thing.

"This thing is ridiculous! How does it chew?" she cried.

"Well, I've had some time to look at it and I'm pretty sure it doesn't. See that nasty pulpy thing you blew off after you killed it? That thing with the hooks on it? That's its tongue. I think our friend here just impales things on its teeth and keeps them there until it's hungry. Sort of a built in pantry. Then it just scrapes off bits as it goes with the tongue."

"No wonder it stinks," Lancer grumbled. "No wonder all the rest of the critters take off when they smell it too. Note to self...when in Rome..."

"Yeah," Rodimus agreed.

"Well at least two good things came of this," Lancer said.

"What?"

"We can make you your own set of knives and a decent set of leathers at last!"

"You have got to be kidding me!" Rodimus cried.

She wasn't. Luckily for him once they burned the rotten "larder" the air cleared up. The teeth and the skin proved very hard for her to cut even with an intense, concentrated laser, but she was pleased with that.

"These are strong! I may replace a few in my set too!" She cut most of the teeth near the tip but she cut two of them very near the base. "Help me get these into the pack," she said.

"What the hell for?" Rodimus wondered, even as they made the 4 yard long shards disappear into subspace. "They're way too long for weapons."

"For now," she nodded, looking smug. "But when we get you home they'll make you a nice set of swords."

Walking was getting easier with the flatter, more solid terrain. They started to see more diverse plants and animals too. The cold was noticeably less intense, and they even enjoyed a bit of rain.

As soon as the first drops fell Lancer set out all the water jugs, her cook pot, and stripped. The drizzle became a hard shower and the mutant was not about to complain. She hung her armor on an exposed bush and stood in the cold storm rubbing her skin as fast as she could. Rodimus was in no hurry to join her, but she glared at him until he moved. He did note that the water made channels of lighter colored skin through the dirt as it ran down his arms and legs. Rubbing helped, so he did. Lancer twisted her greyish braid and noted with disgust that the water coming off the tip was nearly black.

"Gross! Can you help me take this thing apart?" she asked.

He shrugged, shivering, and just did as he was told, which mostly meant gathering the various bits of metal and wire she kept handing him and putting them safely aside. She wrang, and cursed, and tried to comb her fingers through her hair to keep water flowing down and out.

Too soon, it was over.

"Damn! What I wouldn't give for some soap! I swear, the next time I have a chance to pack a pack I'm throwing in absolutely everything!"

"At least the run-off was sort of light gray by the end instead of black," Rodimus offered by way of condolences. He was hard to understand due to chattering teeth.

"At least we no longer look like chimney sweeps," she agreed. Then she looked at him and laughed. He'd forgotten to rub down his face and had streaks like clown's tears making stripes from cheeks to chin.

"You look like a zebra," she giggled.

"Fine. I'm a zebra. A freezing zebra! Can we get someplace warm please? I don't think your sand shelter trick is going to work here," Rodimus' voice had a hint of desperation.

"Well shit...and here I was thinking I would never miss the sand."

They found an area that was more rock than dirt quickly enough, but it didn't have much to offer other than a solid surface. There was very little substance to the shrubs in the area but they quickly gathered what they could find into a heap and threw in some sizable stones for good measure. Lancer heated the rocks until they glowed and the sticks caught fire. They laid their wet clothes out on the floor and she heated that area too to dry them. Her cloak and armor were pretty much water proof anyway so it wasn't long before she could dress and Rodi could huddle under her cloak again.

He still looked miserable and his skins were sodden so she heated the rocks he was sitting on.

"Thanks," he said, smiling gratefully.

Lancer didn't answer right away. She was stunned by how different he looked when he smiled. It wasn't until he lost the smile and turned to see what was wrong that she responded. "Anytime." It made her angry – the smile. Angry because it gave her a small glimpse of a person she would never get to meet. The person he'd been before the Jabez – that person was dead. It was his ghost that smiled at her. After everything she'd seen it was hard to imagine her hatred of the Jabez could get any worse, but apparently she had quite a limited imagination. They were so...so oblivious to the amazing things they destroyed with those creepy hands of theirs.

The assassin dug her nails into her palm and fought down her demon. She didn't want him to notice her mood.

Yeah...like that was going to happen.

"What's wrong?" Rodimus asked, staring into the fire.

"Nothing," she tried. "What makes you think something's wrong?"

He turned to meet her eyes. "You've got your hands clenched and your whole body says you're ready to hurt someone. I'm just wondering if it's going to be me."

"Well, it will be you if the weather clears enough to train later. I'm thinking of starting with the swords this evening." Weapons usually got his attention.

"What's wrong?" he asked again, a bit more forcefully.

"This place sucks. I'm just upset I wasn't thinking about shelter. I guess having an instant safe place to sleep this whole time made me complacent," she said. This was true – even if it wasn't why she was angry right now.

Rodimus' eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he didn't argue with her exactly. "Ah. So it's the place you want to beat with those fists. How's your energy level by the way?"

"A little low, but manageable. Why?"

"Because the next line of showers is coming and it's bringing lightning with it," he told her, pointing out the obvious.

"Oh. Well shit."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * She stripped again and ran.

Rodimus watched her run off to protect him from the on-coming assault. The rain started coming down hard again so he remembered to rub off his face. Then he pulled her cloak up over his head and inched closer to the steaming, cooling stones. The meager firewood was already sodden. He shivered and put his fingers in his ears at the first crack of thunder.

It would have been a good time to dwell on the misery of organic life but Lancer and her storm were putting on too good of a show. The first few bolts came down and were just absorbed. Then she started playing. Unlike the last storm, she was able to control what was happening easily enough to run through some of her training dances. She whirled and kicked imaginary opponents. When the storm struck her she sent it at her invisible enemies – sometimes in controlled blasts...sometimes in fine curtains of electricity that spread around her body like a cloak. Or like wings.

It was beautiful.

Beautiful enough to over-ride his desire to be dead? Nope...but enough to force him to acknowledge that not **everything** in life was total shit. He supposed that meant progress. Maybe she was right. Maybe his madness was something that he could heal from.

He watched her weightlessly flipping and rolling her way through her phantom opponents, only to strike them with blows he knew from personal experience felt like you'd been hit by a brute. Just beautiful.

By the time the storm passed he was less fascinated because the cold made itself oppressive. His feet and hands were bluish and pruned from the rain. The cloak had kept him mostly dry, but the wind had carried some of the rain past the edges to run down his back. Still, when she finally deemed it safe enough to return to him he was glad to see her smiling.

He smiled back at her. "That was awesome," he chattered.

Her smile died the instant she looked at him. "You are going to have hypothermia!" She dried herself and heated the stones back up in one reckless bolt. His clothes were still useless so she shook out her cloak, flash-dried it, and re-heated where he was sitting. "Move around while I dry stuff out!"

This proved painful. " I can barely move," he complained.

"Yeah, that's because you're cold. I'm so sorry Rodi! I couldn't come back any sooner."

"S'OK," he managed. He just wanted sleep.

"No it isn't! Crap, there's nothing to work with here. I'm just going to have to keep the stones warm until your skins dry out. If they dry out. We may have to replace them."

"We got all that new stuff from the stink beast. It'll be OK," he reminded her.

"Not if you freeze to death tonight it won't be. I'm really sorry Rodi." She wouldn't relax or stop apologizing until she had him surrounded on all sides by warm stones. "Go to sleep," she ordered. She could see his eyes closing on their own.

"OK," he mumbled. "Hey Lancer? You remember when you asked me who was missing me?"

"Yeah," she answered suspiciously.

"Who's missing you?"

"Seriously? What a stupid question Rodimus. I'm a mutant assassin with demonic tendencies. What kind of sicko would be attracted to that? He'd have to be crazy," she scoffed.

He stared at her a moment, and then he fell asleep.

She stayed up most of the night, seeing what she could salvage from his skins and keeping him warm. It was nearly morning when she lay down next to his circle, having heaped as many skins as she could save over his body. She was so far past exhausted she couldn't even see exhausted anymore.

When she woke up it was within the stone circle, buried in skins and her own cloak, and under his arm. She spent about three seconds feeling comfortable and drowsy. Then her eyes flared white and she slipped out as only an assassin could – fast but without waking him. Later, neither of them said a word about it but she was short-tempered and taciturn all morning. He watched her struggling to work the knots out of her hair and put the assorted hardware back into place.

Offering to help got him a wordless snarl and a show of fangs.

Continued in Marooned: Part E


	5. Chapter 5

Maelstrom Chapter 7.5

Marooned: Part E

Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original **Maelstrom Comics** and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http/ illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.

This chapter takes place between the comic issues #7 and #8.

 **Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, trauma, and sex. Rated M for adult themes!**

 **Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!**

Continued from Marooned: Part D

They back-tracked to the Stink-Beast, and by the time they reached it Lancer seemed more her usual level of bitchy. Some of the tusked pack-predators were happily scavenging the corpse, but they were mostly sticking to the places Lancer skinned the day she killed it. A blast or two sent the beasts running off, for which she apologized and promised to make their next meal easier.

She and Rodimus designed and debated, harvested and modified, and peeled and dried. Finally, they had a pretty decent sized tent made from one large stretch of skin and numerous teeth of various lengths for poles and stakes. Lancer cut notches into the teeth to help them interlock with each other or catch the skin. Another piece of hide served as the floor, and various tendons from the face and neck served as ropes and tie downs. A few more large bits and they had some stiff blankets too. None of it was comfortable or pleasant, but it was waterproof and warm.

Off they went again, although the first night Lancer somehow picked a different campsite than the one they had spent in the rain. She also made quite sure her pack and any other chattel they had out sat squarely in the middle between them. Rodimus chose not to ask why. About ten miles went by each day with very little change in the landscape or their routine. If they weren't discussing some new tactic Lancer wanted to teach him they exchanged war stories. Rodimus learned how a little group of very diverse people harassed an entrenched network of political and financial evil, and Lancer learned what it was like to be part of a culture that was also a family - that was also an army. Goldbug's name was left conspicuously out of his stories though, as was any trace of emotion in his voice no matter what he was telling her about.

She did give him a certain amount of grief about some of the things he told her about. "So what you're telling me is the Jabez didn't inspire your death-wish, they just improved on it."

"No."

"No? Seriously? So far I've heard you tell me about sticking your hand in a Junkion sweeper machine, ripping out your own circuits to enter the Matrix, oh and LETTING a Decepticon rip your circuits out," Lancer growled.

"Well, I had to. It's my role to protect people Lancer," Rodimus said. " I'm just not that good at it."

She whacked the back of his head. Hard.

He didn't make a sound. He just stared at her.

She stared back.

He opened his mouth to protest and she whacked him again so fast her hand was barely visible.

His mouth snapped shut and he glared.

"Save it Green-eyes. You pushed the Cons right off of Earth your first term and kept the Quints in check too. The whole bullshit that went down when Op was revived should never have happened. Silva couldn't understand it and Talon...Talon was furious for some reason. They were happier when you guys announced the partnership. Both of them thought YOU were more effective. I wasn't experienced enough to have an opinion. Listening to you now though, I agree. Optimus reacts when attacked. You're more proactive...even if you can't throw a punch."

The first time they actually found a pool of clean, clear water resulted in an early campsite and Rodi's first bath. Lancer finally got her hair clean too and she grudgingly let Rodimus help braid it since her solo attempt hadn't held up very well. He got praise for being brutally attentive to keeping it taut while he learned to braid it to her satisfaction. The simplicity and novelty of the task appealed to him as something completely divorced from his former life. There was also satisfaction in seeing her grin when she was able to whip it accurately without a strand coming loose.

He was trying. Trying to be an asset. Trying to help. Trying to play the role of Rodimus Prime...saying what Rodimus would say...doing what Rodimus would do. His heart still raced when things touched him unexpectedly. There was still an urge to fly into a rage, or dwell on the whirlwind of hate in his mind, but he wanted to help her, so he fought those urges down. All Lancer knew was she saw much less of One, Two, and Three, but she was afraid asking why might set him back. She wasn't terribly sorry to see them go either.

Unfortunately, they weren't gone, just repressed.

To her, One and Three were the most distressing. They were the violent ones she had to guard against. Two was just annoying because Rodimus got sluggish and suicidal. Two also worried her because when Rodimus drifted into that state it was a silent transition. One and Three had the courtesy to announce themselves at least.

Internally though, there was no distinction between the three of them. The difference was just in the direction his pain lashed out. The state she knew as Two was the most viciously damaging to Rodimus himself, because his violence turned inward.

It had started in the torture chamber...body bound...all Rodimus could do was think and observe obsessively. Frantic escape plans rose and fell - all contingent on a lapse by their captors that never came. Watching for that moment of weakness made him afraid to even pass out from the pain lest he miss a chance. Questions without end whipped around his head. How can I save Goldbug...how did we get here...what did I miss...why won't they listen...what can I do to make them stop for just one moment? Eventually all of that had turned darker. How can I kill them? What should I use when I kill them? How long will they last if I do **that** to them? It was like a whirlwind of guilt and horror in his mind and it shredded his sense of self like a sandstorm shredded skin. Not one of his questions had been resolved, and where the whirlwind swirled the torture chamber still functioned. He was there in totality, body, mind, and soul - reliving every detail in full while he vainly searched for answers. There was only one way out and he knew it. Death. Sometimes, just overwhelmed by the maelstrom, he sought death out.

Then there would be peace. Silence.

It was when Lancer interrupted his chances to die that he turned on her.

Damn her.

Sometimes he wanted her death to be...special. Like the ones he planned for the Jabez. He had some very special ones planned for certain members of the torture team especially, but they weren't here, and what a shame to waste his creativity. Certainly, she was significant enough to deserve some time, some patience, some pizzazz. She liked to cut herself up, but he could do it so much more beautifully.

Ah...but Rodimus Prime didn't do such things when he was busy being helpful. Primes being helpful and all. Best wait...set things aside for the right time and place.

Any time his mind idled, Rodimus would catch himself wandering between memories of pain and failure to plans of hurting himself or the Jabez...and the Jabez sometimes pulled in Lancer as a pinch victim. The shattered remnants of his rational mind tried desperately to stay focused, but it was impossible to stay busy all the time. Anything Lancer could find for him to do, he did to the point of overkill just to fill his waking minutes with sanity and productivity. Going to bed exhausted also meant there was less chance of him going after her in his sleep – although he had yet to make it through the night without attacking her at least once.

She didn't sleep much. He knew it was his fault she was so tired. One part of him felt guilty. The other waited for its chance.

He started hounding her for things to think about. Where were they going? Why south? Why the equator? How would they know if they made it there? Could they do anything to improve their tent, their pace, their food supply? What about his clothes, her clothes, the weapons? Could they fix the teleporter? Boost the communicator? Make the music louder?

On and on he questioned until she lost her temper. He would subside for an hour or so. Then he'd start up again. The whirlwind in his mind prodded him and the only way to suppress it was to outpace it with other things.

Mostly though, he wanted to know how to kill things better and she gleefully obliged.

Suppressing all of this during the day had two significant consequences. One, Lancer found him useful, if a bit obsessive and annoying. Two, it almost killed him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Lancer banked the fire for the night and savored the warmth. She had her skinning knife and her whetstone in her hand. The thin shrubs in the area weren't good for much, but if you asked Rodimus for firewood he came back with enough for two nights. Awesome. No rock heating duty for her tonight. She felt positively spoiled.

Leaning back on a boulder she took stock. Rodimus was snoring softly and regularly in their hide tent. She was glad it seemed to be dreamless sleep for now. They were making better time; food and water were easier to find, and fuel was becoming more plentiful. The air was generally warmer and the non-stop fucking wind from the desert had toned down to a breeze. This made the temperature easier to bear and best of all kept the fucking dirt on the ground. If they ever got back anyone who dared suggest a beach vacation to her **ever** again had better run for their lives. She had pulled enough sand out of her eyes, ears, hair and any every other cranny to last a lifetime. How it got down past her skin-tight armor was beyond her, but Rodimus was not the only one with chafed skin!

On top of it all her top-heavy, broken-wheeled, overbalanced piece of luggage was becoming a person. She still didn't fully trust him not to walk deliberately off a cliff, but at least he was cooperating most of the time. Except meals. He still thought charcoal was an acceptable form of prepared meat. Little things like complete lack of nutritional content were less important to him than lack of taste or resemblance to any sort of animal.

Lancer snorted to herself. She could see why the Jabez hadn't really broken him, and why his robotic enemies hadn't defeated him. He was too damned ornery. Once he got an idea in his head, he dug in his heels and did whatever he could to see it through...even if it was just seconds at meal-time. Lancer grinned. Rodimus had yet to find a successful strategy for avoiding seconds, but he still resisted on principle. You had to admire the tenacity, if not the crude means he tried to resist her. Getting less crude though, if she did say so herself.

Oh and the ideas he concocted to latch on to. Everything was analyzed and up for debate. Everything was open for revision. So far he'd improved his shoes, her so-called sewing, and their tent. He noticed absolutely everything about the land around them and had a real knack for finding the safest route across any obstacle they came across.

She could do that, but for him it was as natural as breathing. …. Nope. MORE natural than breathing.

How then was this super observant, intelligent, critical thinker so fucking clueless about the Jabez and the Slavers who exploited both Earth and Cybertron right under his observant nose? Where did all of those critical thinking skills go when it came to the war he and his partner were supposedly trying to win?

The Maelstrom had already run across several Terran and alien government officials that had knowledge of the slave trade and turned a blind eye, or even benefited. Lancer had seen to the questioning and disposal of some herself. Robert had also destroyed a few – not with blades, but with information. There wasn't a computer system anywhere that could compete with Sigma Beta, and evidence of bribery or other indiscretions could at least force the Sponsors to start over bribing someone else. Of course sometimes that meant they just Converted someone with the job they wanted. Lancer got to clean that shit up with her blades too. Rarely, the Maelstrom even found someone who knew, and didn't want to help the slavers, but had to because of threats to loved ones or things like that.

The assumption on the Maelstrom had been the Autobots had fallen in one of those groups, with the hope being they had just been unable to act. Turns out they were in the category of "Clueless" instead. Rodimus frustrated her to no end. He could tell her all about the overt politics, economics, defensive and offensive capabilities of every planetary system she could name. He also knew absolutely nothing about the slave rings, smugglers, drug lords, private arsenals, assassin's guilds, and covert alliances which made up the real power in those systems.

Autobots. Wonderful, huge, and betrayed by their own natures. They only saw threats as huge and blundering as themselves. So indestructible they never learned to dodge destruction. So comfortable in their immortality that they never got around to making the changes they needed to survive. Instead they stagnated in the kind of conflicts the rest of the universe resolved in a generation. Millions of years and it wasn't just the same war, it was the same warriors! Optimus vs. Mega/Galvatron...STILL! They were like a pair of stags with their antlers locked together. They couldn't stop butting heads – couldn't see anything but each other – neither realizing they would both starve before they got free.

Worst, they congratulated themselves for it, and the rest of the universe laughed, took pictures, and went about its business. Lancer just wanted to put them out of their misery. Anger at the stupidity of it all made her feel choked.

She poked at her fire with a twig, watching the embers flare. She wasn't sorry there was at least one Autobot who knew better now, although he'd had one hell of a wake up call. Suddenly she straightened and looked around. Something was wrong...different. She scanned with her powers...no odd life-signs. Her ears shared only silence. The air felt heavy, like she couldn't breath.

Glancing towards the tent she knew. The silence was the problem. Rodimus' sleeping form was contorted – back arched, hands digging into the soil, face twisted in agony. His skin was blue. She launched herself across the camp from her sitting position like a cat – landing hands first at his side. He wasn't breathing and panic made her reckless. Grabbing his shoulders, she shook him hard. The rough hands on his body set off One, and he attacked her wildly. His eyes were open and bright but he still didn't inhale. She was feeling dizzy and lightheaded herself. Her right hand smacked his face hard enough to bruise. His eyes saw her...followed her motion.

Breathing did not happen. His skin was almost purple.

"RODIMUS PRIME! WAKE UP!" she roared. "BREATHE you stupid sonofabitch!" Reaching behind herself she grabbed one of the water jugs and dumped the entire contents on his head.

He gasped a long, shuddering breath and she collapsed to the ground and panted as hard as he did. Neither of them spoke or moved for a while.

Finally, "What the fuck was that Rodi?"

" I had a nightmare," he explained.

"Yeah. Why the additional festivities?" Lancer inquired flatly.

" I was...me. Robot me."

"Even AFTER I woke you up?" she asked.

" I was still sort of flashing...it didn't dawn on me to start breathing," he told her.

" It didn't 'dawn on you' to breath? Every kid born has an instinct to breath Rodi, it doesn't have to 'dawn on them!'" she said, and then immediately regretted her choice of words.

It hit both of them at that millisecond. He hadn't been born. Breathing was not automatic, and if he turned it off it **didn't** automatically turn back on again.

He could get out of this life any time he wished.

Lancer grabbed the front of his skin shirt. Her head shook slowly...furiously.

"Don't you dare! Don't you do it Rodi!"

He turned his head a bit away from her, but not his eyes.

"Rodi! No! So help me don't you dare!"

He smiled ever so slightly. Galvatron would have recognized the expression. Then, he simply stopped breathing.

"Oh you fucking asshole!" Lancer screamed, panic jamming her voice. She shook him, smacked him, and swore at him. Her voice faded.

He smiled. He felt himself starting to black out. The whirlwind slowed down...stalled. For a second there was silence. He was free.

Then two sensations hit him at once - her mouth on his forcing air into his lungs and a sizable electric shock kick-starting his heart.

When his eyes flared open in rage he found hers right on top of his. She was lying right on top of him with her clawed hands digging into his chest. All he could see was her glowing, pupilless stare. Her voice waxed so demonic it was almost incomprehensible.

"You are not getting away that easily. What was it you swore to Optimus? That you would fight? On your honor wasn't it? Did he let you out of that? DID HE? I will NOT give up on you! I will force your heart on beat by beat if I have to. GET THAT?! You will wish you were back with the Jabez if you fuck with me like this again! You bring on Three and I'll teach him a few designs of my own!"

One part of him had the sense to be intimidated. Another thought Wow, she's really upset. Unfortunately anything rational was buried under his disappointment at being denied death yet again. He flipped himself up off the ground, lifting her weight effortlessly and throwing her off. Then he charged. She didn't try to restrain him like she usually did. She didn't hold back either. The green-eyed madman and the demon fought for almost half an hour.

She seemed to be everywhere – slashing and biting. Under his legs. Over his back. She dodged and struck – if not to kill, then certainly to hurt. Blood flew. He wasn't as skilled as she, but he was both stronger and faster so when he did hit her body flew away as if launched. He caught her, lifted her over his head, and threw her down. She landed on her hands and pushed back at him – catching him on the chin with both heels.

Rodimus got to understand the term "saw stars" at last. When those cleared he pretended to still be reeling to draw her close and caught her in the ribs again. Hearing her wheeze was beautiful, but the crackle of energy he heard next warned him the mutant was gearing up to fry him at last. He rolled and hand-sprung away from her.

Blast after blast struck right where he had just been. If he hadn't moved he'd be toast – and yet... She's missing! She NEVER misses. She knows how to lead a target! Rational suspicions of mercy aside, he decided to circle back around for a counter-attack. If he was right he could get to her and if he was wrong he'd be dead. Win either way. The glowing, tail-lashing demon crouching at the center of camp certainly hissed like it was planning to gut him.

Nature chose to intervene at that moment by dumping a jug of water on both of them. Another fast moving front had blown in while they fought and the downpour soaked them both with icy rain.

They both stopped cold and looked up at the sky.

Rodimus felt his brain switch from fury to irony. This whole scene was just so... so... stupid. Two crazed warriors, beating each other bloody over nothing really, stopped dead in their tracks by rain. He started laughing. It was hysterical, unhinged laughing, but it was apparently contagious enough to set Lancer off too. He laughed until his sides hurt from more than just being kicked in the gut. Her demon disappeared as she joined him, although he was pretty sure she wasn't holding her sides from mere mirth. She wandered over, still howling to sit on the rock nearest the steaming thing that had been their fire.

"HAHOwOWOWowHAHAHA!" she laughed, although by the time he sat down across from her the sound had changed. She curled up so her head was buried behind her arms and knees, but the hitching sounds she made sounded suspiciously like sobbing instead of mirth.

"Lancer?" he asked.

"What?! What do you want you snot-fucker?!" This came from somewhere between her knees.

"Are you OK?"

His answer came as the largest bolt he'd ever seen her throw. It vaporized the boulder to the left of one he was sitting on.

"Ask me another stupid question! I dare you! Of course I'm not OK! I can't do this! I'm worn out from watching you already! How am I supposed to keep you alive when you can just turn your body off whenever you want?"

"Are...are you crying?"

"NO! I'm laughing. It's fucking raining Stupid Autobot," Lancer snarled.

Raining. Right. "I'm sorry!" he tried.

This time the dirt on the right of him got hit. The rain made the hole into a small pond almost instantly.

"Do NOT lie to me. Sorry has nothing to do with this. Selfish yes. Sorry no."

"Selfish? Lancer, I don't want YOU to die. I just...don't want to live."

"Bullshit. You don't want to die. You want the pain and the guilt to stop. There's a difference Moron. Seriously though? What do you think happens to me if you cash out? You think I can make it here by myself? You don't realize having you to watch out for helps me put one foot in front of the other too? What about your people? You'll die for them but not live for them? How many times do we need to have this conversation? The Jabez are coming for your people. Maybe you're too broken to lead them anymore but you're the best weapon they'll ever have. I don't remember much but I remember punching you in the groin and you didn't even flinch."

" I didn't feel it, but thanks for bringing it up so I can enjoy the aftermath," Rodimus grimaced.

"Yeah. You deserve it. I hope it lasts too, you shit," she spat.

"Hey! I thought you didn't blame me for my symptoms!" Rodimus complained.

The blast hit the ground right at his feet and he had the impression he was about to be on a boulder with a moat.

" I don't! I don't blame you for your symptoms! I blame you for your rational choices though and this was YOU Four that pressed the damned Off Button! You weren't flashing, you weren't dreaming, you weren't having a psycho moment. You just fucking DECIDED to stop breathing! I can't trust you...I can't trust ANY part of you!" Behind her knees, he could see her eyes were pulsing erratically from the light that flared and ebbed while she spoke. "Let's be really clear – you do this again and I will kill you just so I can revive you and kill you again! You completely set my demon off with this shit and let me tell you for once I am NOT feeling guilty about it."

"No I didn't," Rodimus told her. "Look, I get that I screwed up. I'm sorry. I swear I won't decide to do this again...at least when I'm rational, but I didn't 'completely set your demon off.'"

This time she glanced up at him and glared.

He shrugged at her. " I'm still here right? You didn't fry me."

"You're an idiot. I don't remember much but I can count craters. Looks to me like I blasted you plenty. Congratulations on finally learning to dodge and land a punch!" She had her face back down between her knees and he could see her shivering.

Rodimus suddenly felt as guilty as he'd ever felt in his life. He slid off his island (stepping in several inches of "moat" as he did) and approached her. She didn't look up but she growled from behind her knees.

"Come on...let's get out of the rain at least. Get in the tent," he tried.

"What tent?" she asked. He turned and found their structure flattened.

"Oh. When did we do that?" he asked.

"You don't remember either?" inquired the muffled voice from Lancer's knees.

"No."

"Perfect," she shuddered from her ball. "That's perfect. All this is perfect! What a pair we are! Two crazy people marooned together – at least there's no one else here to hurt."

Rodimus grimaced, thought for a minute, and nodded. " I'll go fix the tent."

" I'll help you in a minute," the shivering curl told him.

"No. This is my fault."

It didn't take him long to set up the tent. It was down but not too damaged, although there was one new window that started with two long gashes he had to patch. He suspected demon toes.

"Come on. It's ready," he announced.

The ball on the rock came apart one limb at a time. The motion was slow, stiff. When she finally stood upright she hissed. She shuffled towards the tent.

"Hey! You're really hurt!" Rodimus cried.

" I gave as good as I got Hamburger Man!" she snapped.

" I didn't mean it that way. What's wrong?"

She titled her head at him and narrowed her eyes. He could practically hear her debating internally about whether to tell him or not. His heart sank. Any trust or respect she might have had for him was gone and he found to his surprise that it mattered to him.

"You broke my ribs again, I can feel deep bruises all over the place, and..." she hesitated.

"And?" he prompted.

She growled, "And I think you bit my tail."

"Your tail?"

"Yeah."

"But your tail is gone right now," he pointed out, confused.

Another growl. Another glare. "Right genius, but the injuries aren't. They just compress down to the point of origin which happens to be my tailbone!"

"Your tailbone?" Rodimus' eyes widened in horror. No wonder she was so mad at him.

"Right. Essentially you bit me right on the ass, Mr. Prime, Sir. It hurts like a bitch and makes me want to return the favor. OO...best of all you're gonna have to clean it for me. Bite wounds are notorious for getting infected.

Rodimus contemplated that. He remember how far she'd gone to try to maintain some privacy at the beginning, before finally surrendering to the inevitable. She was never, ever going to forgive him for this.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The battlefield became their camp for longer than they expected. Rodimus had numerous cuts and bites that should have been stitched, but they had nothing to stitch with. The gauze Lancer had been so carefully preserving and trying to sterilize with hot water and self-produced UV light was falling apart. Nevertheless he healed without infection or scarring within a week.

Lancer did not. Other than the bite mark she had only minor cuts. It was the broken ribs that made her not want to move or breath...and she was only too prophetic about the bite. Rodimus did everything he could to clean it out, and she cauterized it when he was done, but by morning she had a slight fever. By afternoon she had a high one and a cough. Using her Jabez scanner on herself revealed a body temperature of 103.

"What do I do?" Rodimus asked her. He hated the ashen tone to her skin, her shallow, wheezing breathing, and the way she glared first and answered second.

"You do everything. You watch the fire, you find the food and water, you make sure I drink enough. If my fever gets any higher it will fry my brain. You may have to find a cold pool to throw me in. However if it gets bad enough to make me start hallucinating you RUN. Got that? You fucking RUN and leave me to die! YOU do not get to die even if I do!"

For once, Rodimus had the sense not to argue.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * She was sick for days. Her misery was palpable and he did everything he could do to ease it. It didn't help his guilt that she talked a lot in her sleep. All of her fears about being marooned in general to the particular challenges of one Rodimus Prime were his to enjoy while he bumbled his way through caring for her.

Some things she was able to talk him through before getting too sick – like boiling some of their meat down to a broth she could swallow. Others, like cleaning her up after she threw up the broth or failed to make it outside to relieve herself were pretty self-explanatory. He was glad their sleeping hides were waterproof. The fact that cleaning them,and her, in no way disgusted or embarrassed him did nothing to alleviate her disgust and embarrassment. She said nothing to him about it when she was awake, but when she was asleep he got an earful.

She dreamt he was dead with wrenching regularity. He got used to talking to her even when she was unresponsive because it seemed to reassure her. Unfortunately, he couldn't always stay in camp. There was firewood to gather, water to collect, and food to find. He couldn't bring himself to hunt while their was still meat in their pack, but the few edible plants in the area got no mercy. The broth he made from those seemed to agree more with her stomach anyway.

It didn't matter. Meat came to them. He was walking back from finding firewood when he heard the distinct snuffling sounds of a pack of tusk predators. He dropped what he was carrying and sprinted for camp...noting with some disgust that he was stupid enough to think of transforming as he ran. The sight of three of them circling the tent with one's backside actually hanging out of the doorway only made him run harder.

He roared, ran right past the beasts in the camp, and landed on the one in the tent. The rage he lived with constantly focused down his arm and he plunged his hand right through the beast's heavy skull. It dropped instantly – the skin blanket it had pulled off Lancer still in it's jaws.

She never stirred.

He shook blood, bone, and brains off his hand as he ran out to face the other three. Only then it dawned on him to draw his knife. One pounced. He dodged and the knife found its eye. Another was already coming at his back but he whirled and stabbed up under its chin. The last was already running away. For a moment, the rage told him to follow, but only for a moment.

He turned to check on Lancer and found her still unconscious and unaware of the 400 pound corpse on her feet.

Several things dawned on him at that moment. She really did need him for one. If nothing else he needed to control his impulse to die long enough to see her off this world. It was the first beast he killed that really caught his attention though. That skull was almost an inch thick and he'd just smashed through it. He was almost positive that even in her rage Lancer had held back fighting him. He couldn't imagine how he was still alive if she'd really been out to kill him, but now he realized something else.

If he could punch through that much bone bare handed, Lancer should have been pulverized.

He'd been holding back too.

"That's interesting," he said out loud. Then he set about dealing with all the corpses and their awesome associated shit puddles.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Hours later she started raving again.

"NO! No don't do it! Rodimus don't..."

"Hey, I'm right here," he assured her, " I'm right here."

She didn't seem to hear him this time and the sobbing broke his heart. This was not the person he ever expected to hear cry like that over anything, let alone him. Then again, he never expected anyone to grieve for him. He was so...into... the idea that they'd be better off without him that the little notion they might be sad never really dawned on him. For the first time, he really felt like he should go home – if only to tell them what happened. If only to tell them goodbye. He was getting a headache again.

His patient called him a moron and an asshole. He felt it a fair assessment. He pulled her gently up and rested her in his lap. " I'm here Lancer. I'm OK. Don't cry anymore OK?Please?" She'd lost weight and felt like a bit of hot nothing in his lap.

The Jabez scanner still made his skin crawl and forced him to endure a few flashbacks, but he managed to get a temperature reading. 103.7 He washed her face with cool water for a while and a some point when he wasn't looking she opened her eyes.

"Rodimus?"

"The one and only," he smiled at her, shrugging.

"You aren't dead?"

"Not today."

"Oh." He watched the grief in her eyes change to relief, then anger, as usual.

"What's that smell?" she asked.

"Tusker guts."

"You hunted a tusker?"

"No. A tusker hunted you and I killed it and a few of it's pals."

"Oh," she sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. "When?"

"Um...I think that was officially yesterday by now. When you're better you will really have to teach me how to skin and cook them – it hasn't gone well," he confessed.

"You skinned them? What about...?"

"What about the flashbacks I get whenever you do that? Let's just say it took a while, and it's good that I like the meat better really, really well done cause it's pretty burned."

" I don't remember anything," Lancer said.

"You're still a pretty sick lady," he told her, bathing her face.

"How long?"

" I think it's been five days," he informed her.

"Five days...and you're still breathing?" She sounded incredulous.

He sighed. " I had that dream a couple of times, but yeah I'm still breathing."

"Oh," she said. She stared up at his face for a few more minutes and he felt obligated to stare back. The anger she'd been aiming at him since the fight just sort of seeped out of her expression, and he felt her muscles let go. She closed her eyes and slept quietly for the rest of the night. By dawn her fever had broken.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * She was still in no shape to travel, and Rodimus quickly discovered that an awake Lancer was way harder to care for than a feverish Lancer. She was bored, cranky, uncomfortable, and critical of things done to alleviate those problems. Mostly, she could not be trusted to wait and/or ask for help when she needed something. He began to understand her earlier need to keep him on a leash. Unfortunately, staying with her all the time meant running out of firewood and water. Not an option.

The first morning he caught her trying to crawl her way out to pee. She cursed a blue streak when he insisted on carrying her and holding her upright while she did it. Embarrassment radiated off her body like her fever had.

"What are you worrying about? Who do you think has been taking care of this while you were out?"

She cussed him out in Drazi.

"Humans are stupid over this stuff. Every single human has had to do this and you all still act like there's a problem with it," he informed her. When she was done he picked her up and carried her back to the tent. He got to learn some more special Drazi words as a prize.

Eventually though, he figured out she wasn't embarrassed about needing to urinate – just needing help with it. He learned to be stealthy about aiding her. Not in a "sneaky assassin" sort of way, but more in a " I'm just doing this because I am, not because you can't walk 5 steps without wheezing" sort of way. The casual, no comment fashion in which camp chores got done was bullshit and they both knew it, but as long as he didn't make too much of a scene about it, she kept her curses to herself. The casual, no comment way she slowly began doing things on her own again also worked for them.

It seemed to take forever. Rodimus longed for a way to just fix her. Two weeks in the same camp and he was thinking of moving boulders around just to change the view.

"That's a good idea," Lancer told him.

"Did I say that out loud? I wasn't serious," Rodimus sighed. " I'm just feeling a bit..."

"Pent up? Stir crazy? Sick of looking at the same damned patch of dirt? Camp chores becoming monotonous? Bored of dealing with a worthless bitch?"

"You were doing OK until the last part," he frowned at her. " Is it normal for this to take so long? Daniel got sick a few times growing up, but it never seemed to last like this."

"Well, I'm sure Ambassador Witwicky's son had the finest medical care Earth could provide. As we have no antibiotics or other such luxuries I suppose we are lucky I'm getting better at all. I'm sorry it's taking an eternity."

" I'm the one who bit you and broke your ribs," he reminded her. He looked at her side-long and then sat down next to her. "How much do you remember of that fight?"

"Not much. I've told you – when I'm berserk I pretty much don't think. Flashes here and there are all I can ever remember when I'm fully demoned out."

"Don't you think you held back because it was me?" he asked.

"Um...no. I don't think I care who it is when I'm like that," Lancer growled.

" If that's true, then why am I not barbecue?" he challenged.

"Because my demon-self doesn't think? Because you're faster that I am? We already had this conversation, why are you bringing it up again? We got lucky, barely. There's nothing more to it," Lancer averred.

" I think you're wrong," he said. " I think you are more aware than you remember. I've seen your aim when you're fully fanged. You hit that tiny eye on the stink beast with one shot but you missed me over and over. What's more, I'm pretty sure I held back too."

She stared at him skeptically and gestured for him to continue.

"When that tusker pack hit our camp, the leader was already in the tent. Lancer I didn't even have the sense to pull a knife. I just landed on it and put my hand THROUGH its skull. If I can do that when I'm not even in mode Three, why did I only break a few of your ribs?"

"Um...armor?" she drawled.

"Um, not on your face," he pointed out in the same "duh" drawl.

"Maybe you think I'm a Decepticon and it's against your programming to kill me," she snapped.

Instantly, he had a migraine. A powerful urge to attack her came from somewhere, but he just assumed it was Three getting agitated because she was arguing with him. Rodimus pushed the mood away with some annoyance. He understood that certain things would set him off but this just seemed stupidly petty to him. He internally berated himself for being childish. Hot Rod will you PLEASE grow up already? She has a point there. he thought.

"Give yourself a break," Lancer told him. "You fought it down. You may have a point about holding back. You've done very well this week controlling yourself, but you're wrong about me. Don't go telling yourself that I'm safe to be around because I think you're cute or something. We got lucky. Next time we won't." He's getting better, but I never will. How can I get him to understand that's he's just hurt and I'm corrupted?

"We aren't that different. If I can get better so can you," Rodimus said.

She heaved a huge, exasperated sigh which set off a violent coughing fit. By the time the drink he got her and the awkward back-patting helped her he'd decided it was time to drop it and get some more water.

Continued in Marooned: Part F


	6. Chapter 6

Maelstrom Chapter 7.5

Marooned: Part F

Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original **Maelstrom Comics** and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http/ illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.

This chapter takes place between the comic issues #7 and #8.

 **Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, trauma, and sex. Rated M for adult themes!**

 **Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!**

Continued from Marooned: Part E

Two days later she declared it was time to leave, but as much as Rodimus would have liked to go, he refused to budge until she was no longer wheezing. Four days later she convinced him, but not by conventional means.

Rodimus drudged his way back to camp carrying as much firewood as he could bundled on his back and in his arms. Their prolonged stay had stripped the area of combustibles and forced him to walk long distances for more. He'd been gone for hours when he silently came around the last boulder to their camp.

For a moment, he was pretty sure he was having a hallucinogenic episode.

His traveling companion had the music on. No surprise there, but she also had a large, bloody femur bone in her hands from his latest, guilty kill. This object was alternating between an air guitar and a microphone as she danced around the camp in a series of assassin's moves turned dance routine. She was quite into singing along as well, because she completely failed to notice he was there for several moments.

When she did she shrieked in surprise.

Rodimus set his wood bundles down and said flatly, " I'll be back in a few minutes." He walked back around the boulder, sat down against it, and tried, really tried, to laugh quietly. This plan fell completely apart when she came around the rock to stare at him with her microphone-bone still in her hands. "Oh crap!" he cried and laughed himself hoarse.

" I don't know whether to praise you for sneaking up on me or kick your ass for being a shit, Rodimus! It's not that funny!"

Most of his answer was completely unintelligible but she did catch "bad-ass assassin," "dance party," and "bone." This came with a sudden clear vision of herself dancing around with a carcass part...and suddenly she was laughing too. She ended up sitting on the ground across from him. They only settled down after the laughing gave her a coughing attack that lasted a few minutes, and he stopped to watch her for wheezing.

She didn't, so he got back to grinning.

"Assassin Lady, some things can not be unseen," he told her seriously. Then he cracked up again. She leaned over and punched him.

He's like a totally different person when he smiles, she thought. His face really lights up.

He sobered abruptly, and the smile was gone, the sun swallowed by darkness. He curled up around his knees.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

" I'm laughing...and it's not even over how stupid we are. I never thought I'd just...find something funny again. Do you think, wherever Goldbug is, that he's laughing?"

"He's most likely dead, Rodimus. In which case he's watching you become a bad-ass assassin too. So yeah, I think he's probably laughing his ass off in anticipation of the hell-fire you'll bring when you get home. Even if he isn't, Rodi...do you really think he'd begrudge your recovery?"

His eyes barely met hers and she could tell by the sheen Two was closing in on him. For a long moment she was afraid he was already lost there. Finally, slowly, he shook his head.

"Do not let guilt hamper your recovery. You need to get better. Keep in mind, where ever he is, if Goldbug's alive he'll have real help around him. He'll be safe while he heals, body and mind."

Rodimus smiled sadly. "You haven't done so badly. I don't think being stranded here was all to the bad either. Being safe...would have let me indulge my madness. Here. Our little asylum...I've HAD to think about other things. You, walking, the weather. Taking care of y...camp the last few weeks...that's helped me more than any doctor."

"Our little asylum, huh?" she asked.

He shrugged.

She leaned out and grabbed her bone. She pounded the end on the ground and decreed " I claim this Asylum in the name of Mars!" in her best Marvin the Martian voice...which wasn't all that good.

It didn't matter. They both laughed until they cried.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The next sunrise found them already packed and ready to leave.

Rediscovering his sense of humor marked a big milestone in Rodi's recovery, and a big pain in the ass for Lancer. He didn't seem to care so much if **he** laughed, but getting her to crack up became some sort of lofty goal for him. The fact that she was still tired, worried, and cranky only seemed to inspire him.

She knew she was in trouble when their predawn camp breakdown was punctuated with lines like, "Are you sure you want to leave? Won't you miss the view?" and "Where will we ever find such fine amenities again? The boulders, the blast marks, the distant smell of rotting stink beast when the wind is right..."

Mostly she groaned and returned fire with things like, "Shut up and pack you moron," because she could just tell he was inspecting her face to see if he'd scored. Worst of all, he sometimes did, and even if she managed to keep her face straight he knew. Somehow, he knew. It was maddening.

On they walked. Assassin's training resumed too, although now Rodimus had acerbic things to say every time she "killed" him – which made her want to kill him. Once in a while he "killed" her instead, but he was always so surprised about it that the humor train derailed.

Finally, she found something that shut him up for days.

Another forty miles or so towards their goal and they noticed a dark streak on the horizon. They had to get almost on top of it to see what it was.

"Fuck me," Lancer whispered.

"Wow...this looks just like the trenches Unicron drew across the surface of Cybertron with his fingers...only longer," Rodimus observed.

It was a canyon...or more precisely a series of them. It did look like an enormous hand had dug parallel groves into the surface of the planet of the planet from horizon to horizon. They couldn't see its end in either direction. The whole thing was less than two miles across but it was split, lengthwise by eight narrow walls that divided it into trenches. Each trench was hundreds of feet deep, but only a hundred or so feet wide, separated by nearly vertical cliffs that were no more than a few dozen yards across at the top.

Even after they traveled along it's edge for nearly a week they couldn't find an end to the canyon. Finally they found a place where a few of the center ridges had crumbled and weren't so high. They looked at it, then at each other.

"What do you think?" Rodimus asked.

Lancer whistled at him with an ear-bending shriek.

"Ah. Is that one of Jordan's cuss words?" Rodimus asked. "What did you just call me?"

" I called you an unfertilized egg," Lancer explained.

"Ah. What?!"

"Well, in their culture, that means your mother was such a bitch that no one would mate with her so she had to reproduced on her own," Lancer elaborated.

"Oh. …. Can they do that?" Rodimus asked.

"Apparently if they really have to. Shut up and let me think," Lancer snarled.

"Why? We both know we have to cross here," Rodimus said.

She punched him. "How's our water?"

"Full, although I don't know why you're worried. You can see the stuff running down the edges too," Rodi noted.

"Yeah, but there may not be any in the center slices," Lancer fretted. "This is going to be a long, strenuous climb and it's going to take us days to cross."

"True, but I'm more worried about getting caught in a flash flood down there if it rains. I don't think we should camp at the base," Rodimus mused. "Once we climb down, we'll have to make it back up to the top before we can rest."

"Fuck," Lancer growled. She punched him again.

"What?! I'm right!" he exclaimed.

" I know. Fuck you for thinking of it though," Lancer said. "Now I'm twice as sure I don't want to do this."

"So camping here and starting at dawn?"

"Yup," she agreed.

Dawn came way earlier than either wanted and they started down as soon as they could see. They roped themselves together and picked their way one toehold at a time. Lancer used her claws more often than not to catch cracks and find purchase. Where they couldn't find purchase she cut small divets in the rock with her powers. She tried to conserve her energy though since they had nine cliffs to scale. By mid-morning they reached the bottom which they found to be damp and teeming with what passed for bugs on Asylum. There were lots of small critters feeding off those bugs too, but they ate their own meat since neither felt they could spare the time to cook.

The canyon floor was littered with random debris in irregular heaps. Dead limbs, bones, rocks, and so forth were all tangled up in each other. There was a stain on the wall too, telling them this debris had come with high water. The highest it went was about 30 feet above the floor. They ate fast.

The climb up was nearly wordless. Neither had the breath to spare except when they absolutely had to speak. Lancer went first, testing the handholds, and clawing her way up like a gargoyle. If she could reach, her taller, stronger companion could too. Still there were a few times Rodimus found his arm wrapped in her tail as she tried to help him follow her up. A few times his hand reached up to catch her foot and support her when she slipped.

Neither noticed that all of this mutual assistance took place without anyone asking for it.

Lancer's carefully maintained personal space was a thing of the past too. The few times they found a ledge big enough to rest on they huddled together and tried not to move.

It was dusk when they reached the surface. A full day of muscle straining labor and they could clearly see the camp they left that morning on the far side of the first gorge. One down...eight to go.

They didn't pitch the tent. They didn't make a fire. They didn't eat. They spread the floor skin of their shelter on the ground, got out the blanket skins, crawled under them, and went to sleep side by side.

It was the first night since her illness Rodimus didn't attack Lancer even once, a fact they both chalked up to exhaustion the next morning. They made up for missing dinner with a big breakfast and set out again.

The second canyon was even narrower than the first.

"Damn. It almost looks close enough to throw a rope across," Rodimus complained.

"Yeah...almost. The top looks thin too. Maybe I could tunnel through at the bottom," Lancer mused.

" I thought about that," Rodimus said tiredly.

"You didn't say anything," Lancer accused.

"Yeah, well I also thought about being down there if the whole cliff decided to collapse," he explained.

" I'm almost tired enough to risk it," Lancer muttered.

"Yeah...almost," Rodimus agreed. "Shall we go Lady Assassin?"

The combination alien cuss words she called him translated to something like an unfertilized egg that was so ugly it needed to masturbate with it's own tail for lack of partners. He grinned and they started down.

The second day was a carbon copy of the first, except that Lancer actually felt motivated to vocalize complaints of tail-strain. Also, the next morning when she woke up with his arm over her she was too comfortable and too tired to move away. By the third day their hands were so covered with scabs they were almost black and bed-time was delayed by the need for intense muscle cramps to subside. Lancer took to blocking some of Rodi's nerves again. Rodimus had to use some of their hides for new foot wear too.

Day four was fun. First they were attacked by a flock of lizardish birdish things. They were able to take out most of them by throwing stones but it cost them time. They weren't down until almost noon. The cliff they had to climb was one of the eroded ones that had made them choose this spot in the first place. It was still close to dusk when they reached the crumbled area and realized they were idiots. There was no place to camp on the rubble – they had to reach the surface anyway – and they had to do it climbing an area that was even more unstable than the rest of the cliff wall. It was well after dark by the time they reached the top, and Lancer had to burn a lot of precious power lighting their way.

They spent day five resting and walking the ridge to find a better crossing place. Although they cooked and ate some freshly killed birdish lizards (a nicely different flavor of roadkill for them to savor) it never occurred to them to pitch the tent. Or talk.

That night Rodimus had his choking dream, but Lancer rolled over and put her hand on his face before it got bad. He woke, blinked in surprise, and inhaled slowly. Their eyes met, and her pride and gratitude were palpable. She smiled, kissed him on the forehead, rolled back over and went to sleep. Rodimus didn't. Exhausted as he was, he spent the night listening to her breath and wondering if he was losing his mind in a whole new way.

Day six was largely uneventful but Rodimus could tell by the way Lancer was spreading out the handholds she was willing to cut that she was worried about how much juice she had left. In doing his best to prove to her he didn't need any silly handholds he grabbed one a bit too ambitiously and caught his left pinkie finger in a crack when he lost his balance. His feet found purchase and her tail wrapped around his arm like an anaconda, but not before his finger was snapped almost in two.

He never made a sound – the scream locked in his throat as always. He could tell she was in a panic though and about to backtrack down to him.

I'm OK...give me a minute.

The face that glowered back down at him was both dubious and demoned out. She was afraid and covering with anger.

He looked at his crooked finger with disgust. He couldn't even let go of the wall to straighten it with his other hand, so he took the tip in his teeth and pulled until it was roughly back in position. Looking back up at Lancer he nodded.

It's alright, let's go.

He knew she was furious with him for hurting himself. Furious and afraid the handicap would cause a fall, but she just grunted a wordless acknowledgment that he was ready and started climbing again. Her tail, poor bruised thing, remained in close proximity for the rest of the climb. He just let his finger have the day off and made it the rest of the way without incident.

When they got to the surface they splinted him up with a bit of bone and skin and by morning it was well enough to use.

Day seven was a carbon copy of day six without the broken finger, although they could trace their own steps by following the blood trail up the rocks.

Day eight was exciting.

They were about to the bottom of their narrowest channel so far when Lancer stiffened and turned her head sharply west.

What? he wondered.

" It's raining. Way over there," she told him. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"How do you know?" His voice was no better. He couldn't see anything on the horizon, although in this pit that wasn't a surprise.

" I can feel the lightning," she said.

Good, power for you. Not so tired after.

"Not good," she told him. "Flash floods remember? We can't stop today."

This time Rodimus called the canyon an unfertilized egg. They hurried. Still it was nearly forty minutes before they made it down and scrambled their way across. Up she clawed when they hit the far wall. She didn't spare power either, but cut a finger-hold for him with each step up. Twenty feet up. Thirty feet up. Past the flood line and yet she didn't slow down. If anything she pushed harder.

Aren't you going to ease off? Rodimus wondered.

She didn't answer but they both froze and looked up the canyon. They felt the rumble through their fingers before they heard it, and heard it long before they saw it. The flood roiled its way through in a tsunami of white foam and debris. Boulders the size of trucks bounced like pebbles back and forth against the walls of the cliffs. The noise was past description. High as they were they both felt spray and small pebbles peppering their skin. Lancer started climbing again although Rodimus clung there, fascinated. The chaos and destruction held him transfixed.

Come ON Rodimus! What the hell are you stopping for? She was desperate to keep moving.

? The flood's down there.

An image grew in his mind. The storm was coming this way, bringing the lightning with it. She was terrified it would arrive before she could get to the top and get away from him. She saw him getting hit and dying before his corpse hit the canyon floor. He followed faster while she continued to recklessly spend her power.

One hour up...two. Rodimus' limbs were quaking with exhaustion and he could no longer even feel his hands or feet. Lancer was probably worse but she refused to slow down. Some small rocks overhead came cascading down from the surface, loosening ever larger rocks as they fell. One about the size of her torso took aim for Lancer's head, but she managed to swing aside enough for it to miss her face. It caught her ear though. She looked down, sure it would have hit the man under her, but he had shunted aside just as she had. Blood hit him on the cheek and he winced as he looked up at her. She grimaced, dug her toes in, and spared a hand to fry her bleeding ear.

Hour three and Rodimus finally caught a hint of wind and the scent of rain. The top was close, but not close enough for Lancer. Desperation made her reckless. She dug her toes in too far and snapped one of her thick, outer nails right in two. She saw white for a second and completely forgot to hold on. A strong hand pushed her forcefully up against the wall. Somehow Rodimus had managed to pull himself up to her level to shove her forward between the shoulder blades.

Neither said a word while she gasped raggedly. Momentarily she was able to reach down and flash-fry the bleeding nail without even sparing it a glance. It didn't completely take but they heard the first dull rumble of thunder off in the distance. She was already fully fanged, but somehow Rodimus still sensed it when she snapped. The demon took over and suddenly she was moving as fast as if she was fresh. Her fingers cut bloody chunks out of the rock. Zap – heave. Zap – heave. He followed as fast as she led. They got to the top scant seconds before the rain started. Lancer rolled up over the edge and didn't even pause to see that he made it too. She **sprinted** away from him, leaving bloody footprints in her wake. He took the hint and headed in the other direction, although he couldn't quite manage a run. He felt his hair lifting and threw himself down into a crouch, covering his ears and eyes with his arms.

The bolts came hard and fast. Risking a peek his eyes widened at what he saw. She stood on the summit with her arms raised. She was calling the lighting to her. Again and again she absorbed it, demonic and wild in a circle of cracked rock. Her roar of defiance reached him through the sounds of the storm and his own limbs around his ears. She pulled the power down into herself and then turned it to the far edge of the canyon. A sustained bolt worthy of Galvatron's cannon blew from her hand towards their last climb and she sliced a canyon of her own from the surface down into the crevasse.

In other words, she cut them a ramp.

Rodimus fell asleep right on the ground in the rain waiting for her. When he woke up the next morning he was bundled in skins...and she was out cold behind him. Her arm around him was boneless in her sleep, but he lay there a while feeling hyper-aware of her breathing against him. When he finally closed his eyes again, he dreamed strange dreams of home.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * She scared them both awake the next morning by moving in her sleep and scraping her toes on the ground.

"OWW! Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuck!" She sat up and grabbed her right foot, rocking her body and swearing.

The sound had him on his feet, knife in hand, before he even registered where it was coming from.

"Nice reflexes," she complimented through gritted teeth. "You need to work on orienting faster though. Fuck this! Fuck this whole place!"

He opted not to argue with her and dropped to his knees. "Here. Let me see." He pulled back the rough bandages she had thrown on the night before and revealed three bloody toes. The nails had all been torn off down to the cuticle.

Rodimus shuddered and flashed. Not the worst injury he'd seen since being here but those bloody stumps were familiar. He'd seen the Jabez do the same to Goldbug's hands...and his own.

She grabbed his hand and squeezed. "Hey...don't flash over this. It's not that serious...it just hurts like a bitch. I do love how you still think about Goldbug first though."

"Did you rinse these out last night?" Rodimus asked tightly, in no way inclined to talk about Goldbug.

"Umm...maybe? I was sort of tired and demoned out so I'm not sure we can count on that," Lancer confessed. " I think we should assume I didn't. At least I had the sense to get some blankets out." The look she threw him was somewhat accusatory.

"By the time the rain stopped I was asleep," Rodimus reminded her. "At least we won't have to climb today. Not that you could with this foot."

"What do you mean? Of course we have to climb!"

Rodimus stared at her a long minute. "You know, I think being fanged hurts your memory more than your reason. You cut us a ramp, Lady. You cut us a ramp all the way to the top."

Lancer surged to her feet, hissed, and then hopped with remarkable grace to the edge. The scarred ground still steamed along a charred path over half a mile long. The young mutant's mouth hung open.

" I didn't know you could do that," Rodimus told her.

"Neither did I," Lancer answered. "Honestly I don't think I could now...but with a thunderstorm at my disposal..."

"Yeah. And you accuse me of pulling punches. By the way, do you seriously think this is the work of a mindless killing machine? I don't think you are as out of control as you assume."

" I think I'm exactly as nuts as I assume; otherwise I would never have tried this," Lancer dismissed. "Let's just get this stupid foot wrapped up and get going." They made her foot an open toed version of Rodi's footwear because the wrap and the swelling made her boots unbearable.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Getting down was more challenging than usual. Lancer would cut a ledge with a raised lip and Rodimus would anchor himself by sitting with his feet braced against the lip. Then he would lower her down on her length of climbing rope. She would cut a new ledge and he would climb down to join her.

The bottom of the gorge was no longer a tidal wave, but it was still a fast moving river of water and debris. Lancer reluctantly shoved her swollen toes back into her waterproof boot. She bound it at the top with hide to make sure it wouldn't leak. The pain was excruciating but neither of them wanted to risk another infection. They kept themselves tied together as they waded in the waist deep current. Lancer stepped on a rock that tilted under her bad foot and just vanished under the water. Rodimus kept his balance with raw strength and will. He grabbed the rope and hauled her back in one arm-length of cord at a time until he could see her and grab her by the collar. She came up like a drowned kitten, coughing and sputtering.

"This is stupid," he announced, and threw her over his back. Any complaint she might have had about the indignity of a piggy-back ride was subdued by her need to breathe. It ended up working pretty well since he could focus on walking and she could focus on blasting any rocks or trees that the river kept launching at them.

When they got to the shore they both sat without moving for almost an hour. They had a bit of a hike to return to Lancer's ramp too as the river had sent them quite a ways downstream.

The ramp made the climb to the surface easier – not easy. It was nothing like a clear or stable path, and by this point Lancer's foot would no longer bear her weight at all. Rodimus stood on her bad side and wrapped his arm around her waist. They went up on three legs, one painful hop at a time. It would have been an exhausting journey under the best of circumstances but coming off of so many days of climbing Lancer's good leg threatened to give out on her more than once. Some obstacles were too high to hop over. When she could she sat on them and swung her legs over. Rodimus allowed her the dignity of doing that whenever possible, but there were still times he just had to lift her. They would have probably made better time if she would have just suffered him to carry her the whole way, but he knew better than to even suggest it.

It was long past sunset when they finally reached the top, and once again they only had the strength to roll themselves up in their tarps.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The next morning they woke to find themselves surrounded by a herd of unconcerned herbivore-type lizard beasties. These were a new species. Roughly 300 pounds of placid scales and muscle that were only concerned with mowing the lawn. They had thick legs, thick tails, four big, soft eyes each, and the little ones were romping around in play. Really, they were sort of cute.

Rodimus didn't even hesitate. He grabbed the closest one and snapped its neck right from their bed-roll. The rest of the herd took off in panic.

"Well, I always wanted some cute guy to serve me breakfast in bed," Lancer mused. "but I pictured waffles."

"You're never satisfied," Rodimus complained.

The subject of moving camp never even got discussed. Lancer butchered the critter and gave Rodimus pointers on such while he set up the tent. While the meat cooked they attended their various owies. Rodimus had to brace his feet and pull to help her get her boot off. Her toes were pretty much purple when they first got it off, but the swelling and the redness eased as the day went on without all that pressure on them. They took turns napping and complaining about how sore each and every muscle was. Lancer took that, and the building afternoon storm clouds as inspiration and borrowed her cloak back from Rodi.

He watched dubiously while she butt hopped onto a fairly large, flat boulder. Using her cloak to shield herself from debris she blasted a crater into it about 4 feet across and just as deep at the center.

"Why?" he asked.

"You'll see...now get inside before the storm hits," she grinned.

This time he got to watch the lightning show from the warmth of the tent while she played with the power. The deluge was as heavy as always and continued long past the lightning, so she was able to join him before the rain ended. He noted, with some unjustified regret, that the packs were strategically dividing their sleeping quarters again. Still, she was in a better mood than he'd seen in a while, so he didn't worry too much.

By morning her crater was brimming with clear,cold water.

"And that is?" he asked.

"That, my friend, is a bathtub," Lancer grinned.

" I've had more cold water than I can stand Lancer," Rodimus said.

"Yeah, I know," the mutant laughed. She stuck her hand in the water and almost instantly it was steaming. "Get in!"

" If we get in all that clean water will be dirty," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but we'll be better...and there will be another storm tonight. Besides, there's nothing like heat for sore muscles."

Rodimus was dubious, and became more so when the water was nearly hot enough to burn him. He watched Lancer wincing as the water hit her cuts and scrapes, especially her scabbed up toes, but as she settled in she sighed with contentment.

" I should have made seats," she mused. "My butt keeps sliding down. By all means though, let me keep it to myself! I'm gonna undo this braid soon and then the water really will be gross, so take advantage while you can. Or don't!"

Rodimus glared at her and knew he was now obligated to try just on principle. He gingerly went in one millimeter at a time while she teased him about being a scaredy cat. He sat rigid for about two minutes and then finally felt the heat starting to work.

"This...this feels...good!" he exclaimed.

Lancer nodded smugly.

"Wow...I can't remember the last time anything felt good," he whispered. Lancer didn't answer him, and she quickly turned away, but he thought he caught her wiping her eyes as she did so.

They stayed in a long time, and Lancer kept the water hot.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * By the time they got out their skin was pruney...something that freaked Rodimus out a bit. They washed their clothes in there too and the water was truly black by the time they were done. Lancer flash evaporated the whole pool and burned the debris at the bottom. It just rained that evening, but it was enough for another, more cleansing bath in the morning. Their herd of herbivores came back too, so they got to watch the "cows" go about life's business from the comfort of their tub.

Then they packed and headed out slowly.

" I almost regret leaving this camp," Rodimus mused.

" I can make another tub later Rodi, and I'll put seats in it too," Lancer declared. " I'm just sorry I didn't think of it sooner."

"Better late than never. Let's roll," he said.

She laughed. "We might go faster if I could roll." She was leaning on a crutch made from branches and sinew, with a hide topper for padding. He became the forward scout by default. Two camps later even his broken pinkie was fully healed but she was still using the crutch. She went forward with her bathtub plans but the weather did not cooperate every night. Rodimus felt sorry for her when the rain disappointed them...her armpit was almost as black and blue as her toes. Despite that, she avoided leaning on him with a dedication that almost hurt his feelings. In the evenings she would helpfully massage any muscle that cramped on him; she never asked for the same in return.

Four camps later, she abandoned the crutch. By six, training sessions were back on. Sometimes they talked, mostly to share stories. Some days they went all day without saying a word – they'd been working as a team so long there was nothing really to talk about. The flora got denser, so did the fauna. Even if a pack of tuskers came at them, there was nothing to say really. Lancer would zap the leader if she saw it first, or Rodimus would throw a knife into it's eye if he did. The rest of the pack would run and they would continue on, unless they needed the meat. They did learn, nearly to their sorrow, that Stink Beasts were only stinky when they had already captured something.

This time though, it was a herd of "cows" that they saw getting attacked, and they learned as they watched to pay attention to changes in the landscape that seemed serpentine and out of place. The long, winding "hill" the herd was grazing on erupted and snapped up numerous beasts in a few heart beats. They bolted, but not fast enough to elude the long lashing neck that followed them. By the time the herd was out of range, the ambush predator had half a dozen slowly dying "cows" in it's jaws. It burrowed its head back down into the soil and froze in place.

Probably won't need to hunt again until long after the weeds have grown back, Lancer thought.

"Yeah, I bet they don't mind the extra fertilizer either," Rodimus mused. " I'd like to get well clear before the smell starts though."

" I'm with you," Lancer said. Then she frowned, hearing the pitiful bleats coming from the "cows" in the beast's jaws. Her eyes glowed and she fired off some quick lances. The bleating stopped. She turned and caught Rodimus looking at her with a funny smile on his face. "They might have lingered for days," she explained.

" I know," he smiled, loving how she ended their suffering without denying the predator its meal. Yeah, that's exactly how a corrupted person acts.

" It's not a big deal you know," Lancer growled at him. They gave the predator a wide berth and Lancer made a point of scanning suspicious hills for life energy before they crossed them from then on. From then on, they traveled without major incident for almost a month.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The climate and terrain had been changing slowly on them. It was warm enough now that they rarely used their thick, hide blankets. They found sort of a forest for one thing. The twisted "trees" they were traveling through were more like large ferns than anything. The branches all came up from the ground at the center, and while they were tough they weren't woody. They curled over at the top in fancy spirals that were fun to climb and bounce on. They looked nothing at all like the forests on Earth, but they smelled somewhat sweet, and if Lancer closed her eyes the sound the wind made passing through them took her home.

They were also good for stealth and environmental awareness training. Most of all, Lancer enjoyed making Rodimus practice his balance by standing on one foot on the top of a frond. He suspected that this had less to do with assassin's training and more to do with amusing his teacher when he fell.

"This is ridiculous!" he insisted. "No one can do this on these springy things! You're just doing this for laughs."

Lancer laughed. Then she proceeded to not only balance on the top of the next "tree" with one foot, she did a whole fight dance right there on the top of the branches. Complete with flips. She finished, bowed, and moved him to a smaller branch for insolence.

Some fronds even began bearing polyps that the Jabez scanner proclaimed edible. As always, Lancer was the first to try. She climbed one of the springy plants at the edge of a thicket and plucked a couple of the bluish growths. Impatient to try something new she made herself comfortable at the top and threw the next lump down at her skeptical companion.

She sniffed. It smelled somewhat sweet and she needed no more motivation than that. Her first bite was still trepidatious – her second was positively rude.

Oh shit these are GOOD! she thought. Sort of like bananas...OK not really, but good!

Mouth full, she eagerly looked down to see what Rodimus thought of them, being mostly convinced his food aversion was due to the fact all the food they'd found so far was universally vile. His expression didn't bode well.

Slimy, sticky, and disgusting, was her next thought. She nearly gagged. The texture was suddenly so disturbing she wanted to puke. The mutant looked down at her hand in shock, half expecting to see a different fruit in her hand.

Cautious now, she tried it again. It's good! They're sweet...they're juicy.

Gross. Just gross.

Suddenly disoriented, Lancer feared the scanner had malfunctioned, or that maybe it wouldn't tell her if things you ate just made you high. Her vision spun and she abruptly had the oddest view of herself - as if she was standing on the ground looking up. She shook her head and tried to clear her eyes but the abrupt motion was too much for the fronds she was lounging on. She fell hard, too disoriented to land well.

Rodimus spat out his bite and panicked a bit. She'd fallen into dense weeds and he couldn't see her. It was so unheard of for her to just lose her balance like that he was convinced something was off with the fruit. For her part, Lancer had traded a mouth full of fruit for a mouthful of mud and was forcefully coughing and spitting it out. She heard the distress in Rodimus voice when he called for her.

Shit...I'm OK. she thought, fighting harder to clear her mouth so she could let him know.

His relief didn't wait for her voice though. She heard him wading through the fronds towards her. When he found her unhurt, he grinned that shit-eating grin of his. She knew herself to be covered with leaves, mud, and the corpses of blue fruit.

I will get you back for that grin in training tonight, you big dope,she vowed, taking his hand.

He grinned wider. "As long as you're in shape to do it I don't care," he told her. "Are you OK? Why did you fall?"

" I don't know...I guess something is up with these plants. It pisses me off. The first thing I like is naturally a hallucinogenic. I felt like I had a brief out of body experience."

" I'm sorry. Maybe someday you can introduce me to actual bananas," Rodimus soothed. Although if they're anything like these slimy blue bits of slag I won't like them either.

"You know not EVERY thing humans eat is disgusting!" Lancer protested. "Just because everything on this world is gross you don't have to be an ass in advance!"

" I didn't say I wouldn't like them!"

"Maybe you didn't mean to but you did!" she exclaimed. She heaved herself out of the tangle , brushed herself off uselessly, and stomped back to the game trail they'd been loosely following.

Dignity recuperation blow up...right on cue, Rodimus thought, shaking his head. He grinned at the trail of leaves she was leaving behind. Mission status: failed.

"YOU are an ASS, Rodimus!" Lancer bellowed.

"Hey! What'd I do now?" Rodimus demanded.

"Just because I fell on my ass does not mean I'm just mad because of it. You are being a real shit today."

"You act like you know what I'm thinking!" Rodimus accused.

"'Dignity recuperation blow up – mission failure!'" Lancer sneered. "Keep your snide remarks to yourself."

Rodimus stared at her. "You really DO know what I'm thinking. Lancer I **DID** keep that to myself! How did you hear me think that?!"

"You said it," she insisted.

" I didn't I swear..." he promised.

Their eyes locked, and suddenly his world view spun too. He saw an unfamiliar man wearing caveman style skins and a dumbfounded expression. Startled by the stranger, he drew his knife and whirled on them. Vertigo took his legs out from under him and he landed on his backside.

Who?! Where did that guy come from?! he panicked.

"Who! Where?!" Lancer was shouting. She had her knife out too. She reached out one hand to pull him too his feet...and then he understood the viewpoint. Lancer's clawed hand reaching down to pull the red-headed stranger out of the mud. He was seeing through her eyes.

"That's me?!" It was the first time he'd seen himself as a human...this time around. Wow. What a mess.

She snatched her hand back...and started backing up.

"What the hell is happening?" Rodimus wondered. He was curious and concerned, but not frightened.

Lancer's mind was in the stalled, emotionless phase of shock. She heard the words he spoke overlaid with the thoughts that generated them...the way he took stock of this strange event...confusion yes, but not fear: What was going on? Why? The fruit? Her mutancy? Not the first time another mind had touched mine...the Matrix...what wisdom would have come if it were here? Is that really what I look like? Such a joke... Why is she backing up? She saw his view of herself as she backed into a tree...saw the horns manifest...felt his concern for her...how he felt about the demonic manifestations as a sign she was upset. Not afraid of her...afraid FOR her.

I hear his mind! In mine! He hears me! **NO!** **NO NO NO NO!** When Lancer's emotions caught up with her they blasted her into a full blown flashback. Her possession was NOW. It was happening NOW! The whole experience of being violated body, mind, and soul ripped through her memory as if it was immediate. The terror hit Rodimus like a physical blow. He saw it all...he FELT it all. Curling up in the mud, he vomited what little he had eaten. His finicky nature saved his life that day. If there had been more in his stomach he might have inhaled it while he was curled up, shuddering and insensible to the real world.

Her flashback set off his own and Lancer got the return thunderbolt of his torture...how they had used the love for his friend to break him. She tried to scream and couldn't. She fell to the ground and writhed in agony that wasn't hers.

How long they lay there, trading hell and trauma back and forth like a disease, they would never be sure of. By the time Lancer came to her senses, the sun was showing it was morning again. She didn't even think it was the next day – given that they had both soiled themselves and the fruit she had crushed in her fall was rotten and full of bugs.

She looked at what woke her. A herd of "cows" had come to enjoy the easy meal she had brought down from the trees and one of them had gone so far as to lick the residue off her face. It licked her again as she stared at it in daze. Others were wandering all around them, and stepping right over Rodimus where he lay, muttering, in the mud. His eyes were wide open and completely unseeing.

Terror tried to build in her again. His or hers? Did it matter? Right now she couldn't distinguish, but a new fear built in her while she looked at him. She knew now, better than ever, how strong he was...how...just good...he was. None of that selflessness was an act. Saving Goldbug was all that had ever mattered to him...helping people...doing the right thing...being a good leader. That was all he cared about. Saving him, bringing him home, setting him loose on the evil in the universe...he really was the best chance she had for redemption. Except now he was in her mind...her twisted, corrupted mind. If the memory of the demon didn't taint him, exposure to her probably would. What the Jabez had done to him and what he had done to himself to cope would only make it more likely he'd follow her into darkness.

How could she protect him? Claudia had tried, after her possession, to teach Lancer to shield her mind. The latent telepathy that had let the demon in was like an open door into the young mutant's consciousness. Claudia had patiently and futilely tried to teach Lancer to meditate on closing the door. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with some of Claudia's "singing" crystals had merely made Lancer frustrated. She didn't have a "center" anymore. All she had was hurt and rage.

Claudia had given up (with palpable relief) after a sponsor's pet telepath had tried to invade Lancer's mind during a battle. It turned out the assassin was now hyper-sensitive to invasion. The flashback and the resulting surge of fear and rage the telepath unleashed when he touched her all got shoved right back into his mind. After the fight Pagan had found him standing in the battlefield, physically untouched, but catatonic and drooling. Never one to take chances, the Drazi had laughed and snapped the man's neck. They had all proclaimed Lancer shielded enough and the lessons had stopped.

For the first time, the mutant was sorry about that.

One of the lizard-cows decided Rodimus' vomit looked tasty and started nudging his head out of the way. Lancer saw him blink and knew any second he'd be coming around. She froze.


	7. Chapter 7

Maelstrom Chapter 7.5

Marooned: Part G

Author's note: This story is part of a LONG series called Maelstrom. It is strictly Gen. 1 - sorry, but that was all that was out when I started writing back in the late 1980's. It began as a fan-publication so the first chapters are in the form of a comic book! If you have not read the nine original **Maelstrom Comics** and the preceding text stories, I strongly suggest you do. This is a complex universe. They can be found at http/ illmatar. deviantart. com (I have put double spaces between the URL here or FF . Net eats the link.) The comics and art which accompanies this series are there...and believe me I am a better artist than writer.

This chapter takes place between the comic issues #7 and #8.

 **Most chapters of this series contain strong language and violence. Rated M for adult themes! Really! Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Critiques adored! This scene contains strong language, violence, trauma, and sex. Rated M for adult themes!**

 **Transformers characters belong to Hasbro. Story and OC characters are mine. Critiques adored!**

Continued from Marooned: Part F

Rodimus came to. Most of his vision was obstructed by a large, slightly raspy tongue, but all her really saw was Lancer, scrambling crab-like away from him. Echoes of her thoughts – Claudia trying to teach her to shield, the notion that distance might help, and her abject terror that she would somehow taint him told him why she was so afraid. She was in so much pain it took his breath away...and now she had all of his slag to live with too.

So sorry "I'm sorry" sorry he thought/said. "I don't mean to hurt you" Not you...especially not you... She'd been through so much – he'd already known and admired her ability to endure it all – but it was so much worse than he'd imagined. Now, he didn't have to imagine. That she had now been through the Jabez lab with him...it was like Goldbug all over again. Guilt didn't even begin to describe what he felt.

"Why does this have to be is this happening?" he asked.

" It's me! The backdoor to my mind...I can't block it!" Kain said I was weak... open...asking for it...let it in...welcomed it.

"He blamed you?" Rodimus cried, furious. "You didn't invite it in – you fought with everything you had!" So young when this happened to her...so wrong to shame her over it. How could she know how to fight that way?

Lancer ignored his fury for her and focused on the fact that he'd seen her memory of Kain. "Rodimus you have to try to block me out! Corrupting you...not you...please not you... "You have to block me before it's too late!"

" I'm not sure I can!" The Matrix link...this feels a lot like the Matrix link...except for the terror. " I've got...a way into my mind too." Rodimus told her.

Lancer felt his memory curl into her mind. Disorienting – memories of his real body – his real self. Unicron...light...the voice of Optimus Prime in his mind...the whisper of the Matrix humming as it bonded with him. Not a fearful memory, even if it should have been. It had felt...comforting...to be loved by such an entity...like being held in Claudia's downy arms. Warmth and safety.

The contrast to everything they had both been remembering made her gasp and clutch the ground.

"Rodi you HAVE to try...please help me!" Don't let me in...don't let me hurt you like it hurt me!

"Lancer you won't you couldn't corrupt me! I will try to block you anything to stop you from being so afraid but you won't taint me because you aren't tainted! Not evil...angry...hurt...like me...not evil.

Lancer flipped up off the ground and loomed over him. He felt the anger...felt the rage like hot iron burning her...burning him. "You... **YOU** You are in love...with me. ME?" Her fingers pierced through her palms and he felt how the pain helped her focus...how she welcomed it. Needed it.

" I...denying it is unlikely to work today, Idiot. I guess I am," he admitted.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Lancer roared, her words and thoughts lining up nicely for a change. "Aren't you an Autobot?! Aren't you a PRIME? Aren't you supposed to oppose evil when you see it?! Aren't you supposed to know when it's staring you in the face?" Too late...maybe it's already too late! I've lost him! Her grief was like acid in his fuel lines.

" I **DO**! I do oppose it! I do know it and Lancer you don't qualify! I've felt your rage first hand now and it doesn't feel any different than mine! Hurt and angry, yeah sure. You have more right than anyone I've ever known! But evil? An evil person would have left me to die! An evil person wouldn't care if dumb animals suffer or if Malice is sad! An evil person wouldn't have this obsession with balancing the scales, and an evil person certainly wouldn't love me like you do!"

This last sentence took Rodimus completely by surprise even as he said it with firm conviction. He blinked. He was unsure how he knew, but there was no doubt in his mind. She tried to scream and found she couldn't, but he heard it anyway.

Then she ran, disappearing like a ghost into the trees. He knew where she was going.

Anywhere. Anywhere away from him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * It was days later when she stumbled back to him, as desperate to find him as she had been to run. She had no clue how she even found the same spot in these woods – she had run blindly until she simply could go no further. Assassin that she was, she had made sure not to give him a trail to follow her, and had therefore given herself nothing to back-track with. It didn't matter. She had homed in on him like a scent hound – it wasn't even a search – just a straight run in his direction once she realized what he was doing...doing to himself.

Rodimus kept his promise to try to block her, and he kept his promise to keep breathing too. To his credit, the effort he was putting into blocking her was truly gargantuan. The problem being that in his...enthusiasm, he had completely forsaken little things like eating and drinking. Given that she didn't know how long they had both been out right after their minds linked, and that he'd thrown up his last meal, she feared he hadn't had any fluids in 4 to 5 days.

Their combined efforts to block each other had allowed them to keep their surface thoughts apart, and had given her the space she needed to calm down. She didn't know when the link had started, and she didn't know why she hadn't pushed him out violently like she had that telepath, but looking back she didn't think this was all that recent of a development. The fact that she hadn't even noticed astounded her, but this wasn't some violent invasion. It was gentle and familiar...comforting even. Like when the Matrix had bonded to him - it felt good. That she liked it scared her in a completely different way from the demonic possession.

Still, this wouldn't do. When she found him he was sitting exactly where she'd left him, staring into space like when Two was upon him. His body reeked of dried vomit, urine, and shit. None of it registered with him. Even her return didn't make him blink or turn his head. She called him. She shook him. She slapped him across the face. Taking his cold hand, she shocked him. Not even a blink. She took his pulse and tried to read his life-energy with her powers. There wasn't a whole lot of energy left to read and his pulse was so slow she thought at first she missed the artery with her fingertips.

"You stupid sonofabitch! I'm not worth it! I'm not worth your fucking life!" She grabbed his icy arm and threw him over her shoulder like she had the day she met him. There was a pretty good pond she'd passed not far back so she took him there and unceremoniously threw him in it – hoping to shock him awake. She stared stubbornly at him as he floated down, her fists on her hips and shaking her head in denial of the fact he wasn't about to come around for her. Her tailed lashed erratically as the seconds ticked by. Tears ran down her face.

He would do it. He was stupid, brave, loyal, and stubborn enough to just die like this because he wanted to protect her. Because that was who he was. Because he loved her.

"You fucking asshole!" she screamed, diving in after him. His leathers were saturated and almost too heavy for her to lift so she cut them off his body with her powers. Then she dragged him halfway up the bank. By this point he wasn't even breathing so she went straight into CPR. In a fairy-tale her mouth on his would have miraculously revived him, but neither that, not the shock to his heart even earned her a blink.

"You're going to make me do this aren't you?! You're go to make me go in there after you! Fuck you! If I didn't know better I'd say you were trying to blackmail me with this shit so you can have what you want! WHY DO YOU WANT ME YOU STUPID, STUPID JERK?! You think you can manipulate me by holding YOURSELF hostage?" She pounded on his chest in fury. " It's not fair! You should have more respect for me than this!"

She pulled herself up to her knees and glared at him. His hair was black with water. His skin was bluish white. He looked so very young...so peaceful...so very dead. She sobbed once...and her hand flew to her mouth to stop it. She was certain for a second she was already looking at his beautiful corpse. No...his heart still ticked slowly.

Besides. She did know better. This wasn't blackmail. This wasn't a temper tantrum to have his way. This was how Mr. Takes-it-to-Extremes did the best he could to get out of her mind. Stupid Autobot. Totally why she loved him too.

Sometimes having no choice was its own kind of freedom.

She wiped her eyes. " I am SO getting back at you for this later," she promised with sort of a smile. She lay her body along him and pressed her forehead against his cold temple, and closed her eyes. It was probably a useless gesture but it seemed right.

Then she _called_ him.

RODI?! please, please hear me!

Nothing. It seemed like she'd entered an echoing, aching void. Maybe she was too late.

Rodimus please where are you?

Nothing.

This made her furious again. YOU'D BETTER FUCKING ANSWER ME YOU SHIT! MAKE ME COME IN HERE AFTER YOU AND THEN IGNORE ME?! I DO NOT FUCKING THINK SO!

Lancer?! He sounded so far away.

No shit Stupid!

Wha...why?

Because you're dying Doofus! I want our minds apart to keep you safe but you fucked up those plans like always!

Sorry...so sorry I can't get out! I don't want to be your next demon Lancer! She endured his memory of her possession.

I know! I'm not happy about it but you aren't hurting me Rodimus! Your mind in mine is nothing like that! Please come back to me! I want you out to protect YOU. Death is not an improvement you know!

Then she saw him, walking like a phantom out of the darkness towards her. For some stupid reason it surprised her that he was himself. A robot with bright flames, built in weaponry, and a sharp yellow spoiler along his back. Only the scale was wrong...she looked him right in the optics and saw/felt sorrow there. He must have felt her surprise because he gave her a faint shrug.

She couldn't help herself. She put her hand on his cheek as if to confirm he was there. Then she backed up when light grew between them where she touched him.

This is all kinds of wrong, she sent.

Of course it is. All this time I've been looking for someone I can respect and trust...someone who isn't mine to lead or follow...someone who honestly gets me, and who amazing as she is actually loves me ...and it's all kinds of wrong. Because why would anything ever once just go right?

I do actually love you, you know, Lancer affirmed, But that doesn't make this healthy for either of us.

I know you do. It freaks me out some. As for healthy...what part of either of us is healthy? You're a mess...I'm a mess. Maybe that's what's happening. The tattered edges of your soul are getting all tangled up in what's left of mine.

I don't know...we'll work on it. But you've got to come back around and take care of your body! You haven't been eating...you haven't been **drinking.** Her words came to him with a complete picture of what he looked like lying on the bank of the pool. He didn't recognize the man in the picture as himself, but he knew in full how angry and afraid she was that he would die.

OK...I didn't mean to stop taking care of myself! I didn't realize it had been so long!

I know. If you had done this on purpose I'd kill you myself, Lancer sent to him sincerely.

You know that makes no sense right? Do I love you because I'm crazy or is it you're so crazy you're lovable?

You're crazy, and you're an idiot, and there's no one else here, Lancer decreed. No chance for you then. Come back Rodi.

"Come back...come back. Come on!" Lancer cried. She shook him.

His eyes finally moved to focus on her. "C...cc..cold," he managed.

This time when she kissed him he actually noticed...although it did little other than confuse him. She glowed, and the water they were still half resting in warmed up like one of her bathtubs. She made him sit there, weakly scrubbing himself clean, while she ran back for their gear and some firewood. Back at his side a few minutes later, she re-heated his pond and put a whole jug of water in his hand. He needed neither words nor even her thoughts to tell him she would force it down him if he didn't start drinking. He drank.

In no mood to fool around with rocks or camp etiquette, she blasted a fire-pit into the soil, dumped a big armful of foliage in, and hit the whole mess with a lightning strike. The tent went up in record time too. She cut down a live tree to make a bench at the fire-side – something he knew she would have never done on a normal day.

When that was done she pulled him from the water and dried him off with her cloak...then she flash dried the fabric and wrapped it around him with practiced speed.

My "My" clothes? "clothes?" he asked.

He got an image of the pool's depths. Down "Down" there...this fucking sucks! "THERE!" You don't want them back! He got another image of the filthy mess he was when she'd thrown him in there.

You threw me in the pool and let me sink!

SPEAK! "Say it out loud Rodi! We can't keep on like this!"

The uptick in her stress was enough to silence his unease about her dumping him in and waiting to see if he would drown. She did hear him decide not to put up with being called "Takes it to Extremes" anymore.

Best pretend that never happened or they would spend all night arguing over what the other was thinking. She dragged him to the fire and put one of the blue fruits in his hand.

But... "But," he thought/said.

" It's not the fruit... It's US " it's us..." she returned. She had spent the last few days trying to find the start of it all with no success. She could think of moments when they had communicated without words going all the way back to the first Stink-beast. Eat it! Live damn you! "Just eat it Rodimus."

He obeyed, although his long empty stomach did not take kindly to it. She had the mercy to make broth out of their stored lizard jerky, and he spent the next few hours sipping it down. She wouldn't let him sleep until he had two cups of it. Hot bath and roaring fire notwithstanding, his body temperature was still low because his metabolism had so little to run on.

She helped him to bed and watched him fall immediately to sleep. She loaded up the fire on one side of him and put herself at his back. Plans to stay awake to watch him and the fire went for nothing as her exhaustion caught up with her too.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The following morning when she woke up it wasn't morning, it was early afternoon.

She checked on him, but he seemed deeply asleep so she got up and tried to think before he woke up and made that into a show.

Her dreams had been weird...restless. Yet she realized with resignation that it wasn't the first time she'd dreamed of his world...his life. It was just the first time she realized that isn't wasn't just coming from all the stories he told her.

He wasn't going to be up to traveling for a few days, and he needed a new set of clothes. There was NO way she was going to be able to cope with the man she loved walking around naked AND being able to read her thoughts. Not with that ridiculously gorgeous body. Self-control Lancer! Find things to think about quickly!

Clothes. Right.

She rummaged through the sub-space pack and once again praised it's invaluable help. She pulled the last of the Stink-beast hide out and got to cutting.

Pants first. Priorities.

All this practice had made her quite the seamstress. She had a nice pair of roomy trousers and a vest to boot in the three hours he let her work in peace. Nice and loose. No need to measure. No need to spare the leather anymore. Nope. Less chafing likely. Yup. No possible ulterior motives either. None whatsoever.

When he woke up she fed him. When he tried to talk to her she flooded her mind with thoughts of hunting and firewood and traveling.

Talking was a problem in and of itself, even if it was about firewood.

They both were trying to keep their thoughts from leaking with frustrating degrees of success. The inconsistency was annoying, but so was any attempt to communicate. They were using their voices more than they had in a month, but "hearing" the words mentally transmitted a heartbeat before they were spoken made for an aggravating repetition that drove them both sort of crazy.

Lancer, "Lancer," What? "What are we going to do? I feel like my brain is on satellite delay with my ears." Rodimus filled her head with an image of moving lips on a screen with no sound until minutes later.

Not now! "We'll worry about it when you're stronger," Lancer said. Just get better.

Stalling...how does stalling fix this? "You're procrastinating," he accused. What else do we have to do while I get my energy back? You've got enough firewood for a month. "The camp's all set...come sit with me..." Best one so far. No wind, handy water supply, softer ground to sleep on...not even one rock in my ribs last night!

" It is sort of pretty here," she said. He could feel her straining to keep anything else away from him.

He patted the spot next to him. She hesitated and looked around.

Stop looking for excuses, "Stop..." he began.

" I heard you the first time. SPEAK damn it!" She sat down on the ground across from him.

Somehow that hurt.

"You love me," he stated. "You know I love you...and you won't sit next to me?"

She shrugged.

"Last night you kissed me," he pointed out.

"Yeah...sorry. That was a...mistake."

" It was an interesting mistake," he said.

"You were numb from head to toe. You couldn't even feel it," Lancer pointed out with a hint of fangs. " It's not an Autobot thing anyway...don't make a big deal out of it."

He glared at her reproachfully. "Maybe it isn't an Autobot thing, but I grew up on Earth Lancer. I practically lived at the Witwicky's and let me tell you, Spike and Carly have no problem with kissing in front of family...all of us Bots being family. I know what it means to them...and I know it's a big deal to you. You're right. I couldn't feel it, but I was still happy you wanted to...with me. I think this mental link thing should probably get us past the bullshit stage, don't you? "

She stood up. " If I didn't like bullshit, why would I love you? I'm going hunting." With that, she stalked out of camp.

He looked after her for a moment. He whispered to the trees she was hiding in. "No you aren't. We have enough food for a month too...and you won't kill anything unless you have to." Looking around he found nothing left to do in camp and he definitely needed a project. He looked up at the bouncing fronds around him and smiled.

Keeping focused might help, because he could tell she was going to fight him every step of the way.

When she came back just before dark, she was empty handed. He smiled to himself and pretended not to notice.

"What's that?" she asked, looking at the long, curved branch he was fiddling with.

" It's a bow. Next Tusker pack we find will get me some arrowheads too. I'm tired of not have a ranged weapon around."

"You're making a long-bow, Mr. Autobot? Wouldn't a crossbow be more...technically advanced?"

"Maybe, but this is cooler..." he smiled. He had decided to try being cheerful so he didn't have a relapse of Three and punish her for her obstinance. He pantomimed firing it even though it had no arrows and no string. "See? That looks cool."

"Cool. Right. I'm going to bed." She disappeared into the tent to avoid him this time.

" I know you like it!" he called after her.

When he finally followed her, he sighed. The wall of chattel was back. He knew why she was doing it tonight, but only then thought to wonder if she'd been using it that way all along. When had it started? The night of the first rain. The night he'd pulled her under the skins with him to keep her warm. He shook his head and crawled into the skins on his side of the tent.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * That night Lancer dreamed of Cybertron. It didn't even shock her that it felt like home. She walked on metal legs through the halls of Central, smiled at Autobot-friends who greeted her affectionately. She strolled into Rodi's office like she owned the place and he looked up from his work with a smile.

Hey Lady! What can I do for you? he asked her, that demon-grin on his face saying he knew full-well.

She told him, so he pushed the clutter on his desk aside, lifted her up onto it by the waist, and complied.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Rodimus woke the next morning to find her sitting, cross-armed, in the pool.

"What are you doing?" he asked, noting her shivering and the complete lack of steam. Why are you suffering in the cold?

" I'm having a bath! What does it look like?" Cold water...doesn't do shit... "QUIT LISTENING RODIMUS!" He got that last through his ears AND their link, although the mental stuff also came with everything she was trying to repress and hide from him.

" I'm NOT listening...I'm hearing, but I'm not trying to." You do realize that the quickest way to get my attention is to think something like "Oh God, PLEASE don't let Rodi pick up on this!" right?

Fuck you, she said and sent.

I remember ALL of my dreams Lancer. You did fuck me...last night...and it turns out a few times last week too. I thought I was just dreaming but it turns out you were there too. Did you rip up your skins again last night or just get them good and sweaty?

This time, when she blasted at him, he didn't even dodge. He just crossed his arms and waited while she turned the ground all around him into cinder and glass. You done? Apparently not. He remained motionless during the second barrage too. At his feet, the ground smoldered. Around her, the pool was steaming nicely now.

She glowered and glowed. It was an impressive effect with the steam and the horns and all that.

A camera would be great right now, he thought, finding her dangerously beautiful.

She punched the water in frustration.

"WHAT?" he cried, suddenly angry too. WHAT is the big deal? There's no part of you I haven't seen! No part of you I haven't already touched! I wiped your ass, you've wiped mine! There are no secrets here! "There's nobody here!" It's just us...you and me! Who am I going to hurt? There's just you and you don't even mind if you die. If you "corrupt" me who cares?

" I CARE!" **I CARE!**

Why? There's nothing I can do for you! I can't erase your pain! I can't get us off this rock! I can't make the food good for you or your wounds heal faster. Just once couldn't we find one thing, just one, to make this whole mess suck less?

What if it hurts you? What if it messes up your chance to get better? To go back to who you're supposed to be?

Who I'm supposed to be? I don't know who that guy is but if he's standing between us I'll kill him myself. Lancer, you know we're going to die here right? I'm never gonna see my people again. You'll never raid another Slaver base. We're never going back...and if I'm wrong somehow I will never be the same person I was anyway. I'm tired of fighting you all the time. Underneath is all was a sort of desperate certainty: that he really was going to die here without ever knowing what this thing between them could be.

She lowered her head like a charging bull and came up out of the pond one slow step at a time. She got right in his face and growled low under her breath.

I'm not afraid...I'm not afraid of you, Love, he sent at her...meaning so much more than her fangs. He couldn't help but think, Nice try though...the growl was a nice touch.

Eye to eye, they stood there for a few long minutes until finally she grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him.

Their tent was maybe eight feet behind them, but they didn't make it that far.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Stop it Rodi, Lancer sent, throwing him a dirty look over her shoulder. He was trailing behind her while they walked.

The look he sent her back was pure innocence. Yeah. He was as innocent as a cat with tail-feathers hanging out of its mouth.

Not much had changed in their daily routine. Packed and ready by first light, traveling until dusk or a favorable campsite presented itself, and training along the way and before bed. The problem was that as much as Lancer defeated her mate eight times out of ten while training, he absolutely turned that around when it came to their more intimate interactions. His libido had an off switch. Hers didn't, and driving her crazy when they were hours from stopping had become his new favorite game.

You are a sadist and a shit. I'm gonna kick your ass **so** hard tonight, she vowed.

Oh like last night? he asked brightly. This came with a full-sensation flood of imagery. She'd knocked him down, but her final move had landed her straddling him...and suddenly they weren't sparring anymore.

She gasped, and glared at him again.

We could stop, he suggested. He presented her with several options for spending the time while stopping.

I should have known you were the evil one all along, she grumbled, even as she lingered over the ideas he was sending her. We'll never get anywhere if we stop every time you get the notion. We're just lucky I can't get pregnant or I'd have a litter by now!

Two weeks is not long enough for you to have a litter, he pointed out, catching up with her. We could try though.

Two weeks is long enough for us to have gone three times further than we have!

Uh-huh, he sent. Wouldn't want to be late for that big party they have planned for us. Having a mental link with your lover had it's advantages – he knew exactly where to put his hands.

Incorrigible, she managed. Let's go! She let her aggravation carry her feet along until they stopped to eat at mid-day. There wasn't a whole lot of food consumed that meal, and they ended up making camp right there.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * In spite of massive stalling, they eventually did get within Lancer's target range. Without a map or any stats on the world they were on, they knew they couldn't ever know precisely when they reached the equator, but using her scanner and the stars they knew they were reasonably close.

The weather was warmer, although still much cooler than the tropics on Earth, and the terrain was waxing towards hilly again. They found a river and followed it a few days until they reached a rocky cliff beside it. Lancer found a small crack in the hillside that opened up to a slightly larger chamber.

We better put a bid in on this place before someone buys it, she sent.

It's sort of tight in there, Rodimus mused dubiously.

I thought you liked sleeping on top of me? It is sort of tight though...too bad we have no means of making it bigger. Oh wait, we do! Hah! We'll have all the amenities! I have plans!

Plans included blasting a door they could actually walk through, stairs down to the river and up to the surrounding fields, and small, downward slanting holes that let in air and light, but not rain. Inside she carved out ever bigger chambers and tunnels to connect them. On the surface, she dug out a cistern with a small, slanted shaft down into the cave. She connected it to a side stream that fed into the main river and connected that with another small shaft down to the main waterway. It got them a lovely, continuously running fountain right through the cave. It fell from the ceiling of the first chamber and down to a small basin she cut into the floor before heading out to the river. It wasn't a perfect system...they still had to purify it before using it, and the drain at the top clogged with annoying regularity. Still, they had running water indoors.

She cut benches, a fire-pit and chimney, and best of all, an indoor latrine that fed directly into the river beneath them, complete with bench.

Rodi mostly hauled rocks...although he did lash together a wooden door and a rain-guard for the chimney. These worked well, although his first attempt at a raised bed didn't. It held up to their weight just fine, but their first try at sex on it snapped the leather bindings, plopping them unceremoniously on the ground. They had laughed their way to the end of things that night, and his next effort had twice as many legs and straps on it. He finished his bow, but never did get around to making any arrows. Lancer kept him occupied with other things. She even made a point of cutting a large, smooth wall for him along the back of the main chamber, and handed him a charcoal tipped stick. When he had time, especially on rainy days, he filled that wall with drawings of his friends...and hers.

Between that wall and the fire-place they had a big rock Lancer cut flat to set things on. They dubbed it "The Mantel" and among the things that got left there were Lancer's communicator and teleport belt. Lancer set the devices to alert them if anything viable came into range. Rodimus came up behind Lancer as she put them there and made sure they had juice. He rested his head on her shoulder and wrapped her up in his arms.

What are the odds that thing will sound off? he asked.

Lancer shrugged. I have no idea. Probably infinitesimally small.

Is it selfish of me to hope it never does? he asked.

Yeah... but I'm selfish too, Lancer confessed.

I miss them, Rodimus sent, indicating the drawings of his people. I miss them and I'm worried about them...but I don't miss the war.

I know, same here, but if we go back, and get you right... I will miss holding you more, she sent. She turned around and kissed him desperately.

I take it this is encouragement to make the most of the time we have? Rodimus laughed, although where she was grabbing him pretty much made that inevitable.

Oh yes it is, she answered.

What if we never get back? he wondered, pushing her up against the wall.

She bit him on the arm, Then I would like to die a very happy woman, she proclaimed. See to that, won't you?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * They got pretty comfortable in their new "house." Tweaking it became a favorite way of killing time between other, more energetic activities.

Lancer still felt obligated to train Rodimus in the ways of assassinating enemies they never expected to see...even though her memories had pretty much taught him all she knew. They practiced religiously every day, and Lancer checked the charge on her teleporter and communicator every day too..at first. Every couple of days, they even spent an annoying afternoon practicing speaking to each other and blocking their sendings...for when they had to go home and act like normal people. For when she left him.

They were going through the motions really, and they both knew it. These worthless gestures made them feel less guilty about being out of the game. Somewhere out there her friends were hunting Slavers and hindering Sponsors. Somewhere out there the Jabez were working. Somewhere out there, Optimus Prime was running a whole planet by himself, and worrying about entirely the wrong enemies.

So they pretended to train, pretended they were still trying to get home to help, when really every day that passed turned their minds more towards a future where they had only each other to answer to. Flashbacks and nightmares became scarce inconveniences which were usually combated by love-making. She growled less and forgot to worry about corrupting him. For the first time ever, she regretted being told her powers made her infertile too. When she shared that memory with him, Rodimus was furious, and oddly disappointed. The way he saw it, it was his obligation to prove the jerk doctor who told a nurse "Well, at least this one can't breed," very wrong. The idea of making a child, here, with her, was more than appealing to him...a fact which mystified his mate.

Of the two of them, he was the most at ease with the notion of never getting home. Rodi started thinking of himself as Rodi. Not Rodimus Prime. Not even Rodimus...just Rodi. Lancer's mate. He put the title aside – not so much like throwing it away, but more like Lancer's belt on the mantle. It was there, to be dusted off occasionally, maybe even looked at or tried on for a minute, but only when he was waxing nostalgic. "Prime" was his past, not his future.

His headaches pretty much disappeared too.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Lancer was snoring..and drooling a bit too.

Rodimus grinned and took this as a sign of mission accomplished, but he wasn't ready to sleep yet. They'd been at this site for several months and as happy as he was, his mind was always restless.

He rubbed his hand gently down her back, rubbing a bit at the puckered skin along her shoulders where she had clawed herself so many times. It got tight. Sometimes it pulled a bit painfully. He was glad she seemed to have gotten past all of that. Even the eternal redness on her palms was fading. If he had his way, she'd never have a reason to put her nails into her flesh again.

Getting up silently he walked to the wall he had drawn on. It was pretty much full, but right now he was regretting that. It occurred to him, he should have tried to draw Elita next to Optimus Prime. He'd never met her, but the Matrix had shown him her face more than once. Rodi knew now how much Elita, and the loss of Elita, had shaped his partner into the Autobot Rodi knew.

"Sorry Op. I'll fix it," he promised. He looked down the wall and found the only other Autobot couple he knew. Arcee and Springer – standing there with the Wrecker's arm around his girl.

"Did you move in with her yet Springo?" Rodimus snorted. "Or are you still pretending you're not a lost cause? Lemme tell ya Buddy. You are a lost cause...don't...don't keep wasting time. OK? You aren't as safe as you think. You're so lucky. We've got one femme right now and she is so yours. Don't squander it like you have forever. You don't have forever."

He sighed and smudged Springer's picture by giving it a poke. Looking at Arcee again he laughed at himself. What a stupid crush he'd had on her. He still loved her, totally as a friend, but he knew he wasn't alone in longing for her. At least the Paradronian exodus had given some of his Autobots new options for mates, but if you weren't inclined for the male on male option then your choices were still very limited. Hey but at least the odds of finding a femme to build a life with were now only 200 to one instead of closer to 600 to one.

Cybertron remained a lonely place for most of its children. It made him sad, especially when he thought about the old, scarred veterans like Kup and Magnus who really could have used a reason to smile. He glanced up at his drawing of Magnus. He'd drawn a smile on it first but had to erase it after a day – it was wrong.

Lancer stirred, probably disturbed by his worries. He went back to her side and stroked her hair and shoulders again. She smiled in her sleep. She seemed so child-like and he felt the familiar need to protect her. He thought about their frequent fights about this attitude of his. His Lady Assassin. She never wanted him to think he should protect her. She wouldn't even let him delude himself into thinking he could. Time would get her if nothing else did.

Briefly, selfishly, he wished she'd been an Autobot, or that he'd been human-born. He hated the way she imagine their relationship if they ever got back home. Doomed. That's how she saw it, unless somehow making him a robot again was impossible. She planned to make sure the Jabez who studied him and any information they might have gleaned were utterly destroyed. Then, on the off chance she survived such a ridiculous mission on her own, she planned to find the Maelstrom.

There was some ludicrous notion in her mind that he'd be just fine and would find someone else in no time. Even a mind link with him wasn't going to disillusion her there.

Yeah, because femmes who could fall for a flash-backing, occasionally psychotic, assassin Autobot commander, who just occasionally liked to try murdering you in his sleep were lined up around the corner.

Really Love, he sent to Lancer while she dreamed, No one but you would even survive the experience of sleeping me with.

He had a brief fantasy about what it would have been like if she'd been a female Autobot he could have built a real life with, but really, he was learning to appreciate being human. He knew that between her lightning fueled metabolism and his...non-humanness... that the odds of her getting pregnant were near zero...but the idea of it intrigued him. Besides, if there was another life at stake, maybe she'd stay with him even if they did get home. He wondered then, as she so often did, why his species was reliant on Vector Sigma for that...and why the factions were activated as enemies. Maybe even the Decepticons would have been happier and less likely to make war if they had partners to ease the loneliness.

Really now...what was up with that?

He felt a ghost of a headache starting but he ignored it. It was like all of the questions Lancer had been hounding him with struck at once.

Rodimus stiffened. Before his torture these were things he just accepted, but now his cynical, calculating mind held on to the question of "why?" and began leading his imagination down dark paths he never dreamed existed. It was like it was the first time he coud really think about these questions. Maybe knowing that Vector Sigma was a Jabez construct made his worship it less. Maybe his hard-headed mate had just finally cracked through his blind trust.

Why were the Bots and Cons programmed to be enemies from the start?

Why, if they were all such warriors, did the warriors get so little done in terms of winning the war? Couldn't any of them on either side come up with a successful strategy? Or even just catch a lucky break that turned the tide? Over millions of years the odds of that were...impossible.

That was impossible.

He began quaking with rage as things suddenly fell into place with such shocking ease that he knew there was no possibility he could be wrong. There was only one common denominator for all of that. A common denominator with undeniable ties to the Jabez too.

He took a cue from Lancer and started growling in his throat.

W... What is it?! Lancer said, startled out of her sleep. She sat up confused. He was blocking her, but she hissed and started fanging in response to even the small fraction of his rage which got through. She respected the block though, and spoke. "Rodi? What's wrong?"

" I'm wrong! Everything is wrong! My whole fucking existence is wrong! All I've ever been taught! All I ever believed! It's a lie!"

"Rodi...? Let me in! What are you talking about?" Lancer said, sounding frightened. She hadn't seen him this angry in months. His eyes burned that scary green that meant Three was close.

"No. I want to talk this out. I don't want your opinion swayed by my emotions. Maybe you can see a different answer to this equation."

"What equation? Rodimus what are you talking about?"

He began numbering off on his fingers. "One -Vector Sigma and the Matrix are of Jabez design. Two - we know the Jabez hire others to do their dirty work on a regular basis, and I KNOW that it was a Quint using a Jabez designed teleporter which delivered me into their hands. Three -Vector Sigma DESIGNS the personalities of ALL Transformers. Autobots and Decepticons alike... a truth we blindly ignore. We have females, we even have legends of new sparks, but only a very few. Vector Sigma controls almost every new person who has ever been activated. Who they are...which side they will be on. It's all prescribed...and it is always, ALWAYS in balance with the other side."

He frowned and glared at her, watching her face. It was her criticisms he was voicing, just wrapped up in a new package of deliberate deceit.

After letting her wheels turn a minute he went on. "Every period of peace on Cybertron, no matter how good it seemed, ended in a new war. Sometimes some new Decepticon leader caused trouble, sometimes misunderstanding started it and both sides blamed the other. Neither side EVER had a clear advantage either. There was always enough resistance to make things difficult. The Decepticons never really crushed us and we never really subdued them. You've been bitching at me about that from the start. Your human wars come and go but at least they all END. Not ours though – it just goes on and on."

He grimaced and threw his hands up. "Does this add up to anything to you?"

"Besides the fact that you're all lousy fighters, and you need to improvise more instead of relying on the same solutions every time?" Lancer said, with a faint smile to show she wasn't ENTIRELY serious.

"There's that too! Why is that? Why is it in all these MILLIONS of years we haven't figured that out for ourselves? Even I never strayed THAT far from what was expected, and I'm supposed to be some radical, young hot-head! What's the matter with this picture?"

Lancer sat looking at him seriously, frowning in concentration. She thought about it a long time. " It seems...very unlikely that this is all just coincidence, Love. Do you think the Jabez have been manipulating events on your world like they do elsewhere? It's possible, although I don't ever remember them showing interest in Cybertron before you were taken. At most, it's been a layover for slavers."

"Not the Jabez, Lancer. Vector Sigma...although it probably got the idea from them."

"Oh..." Lancer's voice trailed off as she thought about it. She pressed her lips together, but that didn't stop a faint snarl from emerging as she went through the same seamless revelation. "You're right," she said. There was no room for doubt in her voice. "To what end though?"

"Oh, that's simple enough." Rodimus said bitterly. " I think Vector Sigma is a Jabez gizmo like the ones on the Maelstrom. Somehow it became self aware and didn't like being used. Can't blame it there. But then it gave the robots it was programming both sentience and the rebelliousness to fight off the Quints. It used my ancestors to free itself and then enslaved us instead of returning the favor. It manufactured enough lies and conflicting personalities to keep Cybertron in such chaos that other races were afraid to go there until recently. We think we are a living shield, Lancer! I think our wars, our pain, and our very lives are merely to make it nearly impossible for anyone, Quints and Jabez especially, to get to Vector Sigma!"

He turned away from her and hunched down, hugging his knees. " It was all for nothing. All those lives that were lost, all those eons of war, famine, and hatred - all for nothing." He slammed his fist sideways into the stone wall.

Forgetting to speak, he went on. Great Cybertron! I can't process all of this. Just thinking about how Optimus suffered is too much! I can't even blame the Decepticons! They didn't choose their personalities anymore than I did! We're all just little puppets dancing to the tune of whichever one of our "masters" happens to have the strings at the moment. At least the Jabez are honest about it and kill off your personality first! At least Converts don't go around deluding themselves that they're real people with free will.

Rodimus! Is that what your thinking? That you aren't a real person? Of COURSE you're real! You've just been used in yet another disgusting fashion! That doesn't reflect on you!

Nothing I was ever taught was valid! Lancer, even the Matrix is Jabez design!

Rodimus! That doesn't cheapen what it is OR what you and the Autobots are! That VALIDATES what you are! The fact that your people can take a Jabez manufactured memory crystal and shape it into such a powerful positive force... is nothing short of miraculous! The Jabez may have thousands of those things, but I guarantee none of them would have affected Unicron in the slightest! What would they do? Spout data at him? What about the hate plague? Do you think the memory crystals on the Maelstrom would cure that? They can't heal a paper cut! So, it didn't start off as a gift from heaven. So what? The fact is not only were your people CAPABLE of making it into something more, they DID make it into something more. Love, that is NOT the work of a race of puppets."

But... Rodimus sent, "We've been under its delusions for so long.

You aren't anymore. More proof that you're more than just a pawn in some sick game, Love! Maybe Vector Sigma has been using your kind, but you are still capable of growth and change, and you sir, have just outgrown its control.

Rodimus smiled a little uncertainly, and Lancer sighed, trying to dispel the last of his doubts.

I wish you had been there with that Matrix of yours when I was possessed. I have a feeling things would have gone differently.

Rodimus gathered her to him and held her protectively. For once, she didn't challenge his need to do so and leaned into him. He rested his chin on the top of her head. You are so wise sometimes, he told her.

No. she answered, I just know a good thing when I see it.

"Me too, " he said huskily, staring at her.

"No, " she tried to say, but he cut her off with a gentle kiss - cupping her chin with his fingertips. With his other hand, he grasped her waist and drew her closer.

" I love you," he whispered.

"And I love you, you silly Autobot," Lancer said with a smile. But sometimes you think too much. She then saw to it that not only was he incapable of thinking at all for a while, but that when she fell back to snoring he was right there with her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Weeks turned into months. Lancer took to wearing her hair down, or at most in a simple pony-tail. She still let Rodi brush it for her though. They went so far as to plant a small garden with edible flora and were discussing fencing in a herd of "cows." Training sessions still took place faithfully every day, but had become more of an enjoyable form of exercise and a perverse form of fore-play. Winner take all...losers were never weepers though. Sometimes ties were settled right during the melee. Sometimes it got hard to tell when the sparring ended or the love-making began when the demon and Three got involved.

Less faithful was Lancer's attention to the batteries on her equipment. Sometimes, she let them sit a few days before checking them. It made her feel guilty, so she tried to keep up on it, but sometimes life was distracting.

The morning they lost each other she did manage to charge things. If she hadn't she might have grown old on Asylum.

It was raining, which meant most chores were canceled and getting dressed was too. The damp air was chilly. She did her charging up job and crawled eagerly back into bed. Not at all chilly was the bed. She let her mate pour himself into her...body, mind, and soul. They shared the feedback of what they were doing to each other back and forth along their link until it was impossible to distinguish where he ended and she began.

The squeal of static and strange voices that cut into their home panicked them both.

They both jumped to their feet in alarm at the noise – Rodimus had his dagger. Lancer glowed. Then they realized what they were hearing – Lancer's communicator. Somewhere, there was a ship in range. Her teleport belt went off seconds later. Jump point confirmed.

Rodimus reached for Lancer's hand but she pulled back - straightening and staring at the belt with a white-eyed glare. Her face was set and emotionless.

Rodimus grimaced, snatched the belt from the rock, and glared at it. His arm lifted as if to dash it to the ground and then froze, staring at the drawings of his friends. His eyes gleamed brightly with unshed tears - and then he lowered his arm and his gaze. When he lifted them again to meet Lancer's eyes his face was as cold and set as hers. They stood facing each other - the Prime and the assassin. It was Lancer who turned away first. She started packing, but there wasn't all that much to take.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * They listened in on the communicator for a while. Lancer's early guess that this was a previously used jump point for the Jabez had been only too prophetic. From what they could tell from the somewhat garbled signals they were hearing, the ship on Asylum was a mineral miner and freighter...there to collect rare metals for Conversion chips, and deliver a shipment of low level Converts for the processing plant.

"Oh I don't think so," Lancer growled.

Is talking the best choice before a mission? Rodimus asked. They won't hear us this way.

The assassin didn't even acknowledge she heard him by shaking her head. He sighed and asked her again out loud. "Wouldn't it be better to use the link?"

"What link?" she asked. "Come on. We'll need to wrap the belt around us both."

"We're going in blind," he pointed out.

"Better blind than out of range. We've got to move before they do," she growled.

He stepped into her arms and she activated the mech as soon as he was clipped in.

In one sickening instant, their comfortable home was gone and they found themselves in the corridors of an old, ugly work ship. The halls were tight. Pipes and gauges spewed data, steam, and noise. Everywhere moving, banging equipment lined the ceilings and halls. It was dirty, it was maze-like, and it was dark.

It was an assassin's dream come true.

A Nebulan in a work suit came around the corner so Lancer leapt up to cling to the pipes along the ceiling. Rodimus just found a crevasse between two instrument panels to press himself into. The worker passed Rodimus first without so much as glancing his way. The Autobot stepped out silently and finally became an assassin in truth, plunging one of Lancer's needle-knives up under the alien's chin from behind. Rodimus wasn't as certain of Nebulan anatomy as he was of human, so he made sure to stir the blade around the skull a bit before withdrawing.

Most of him was reeling from shock that they were here...that within the space of an hour he had gone from making love to his mate to killing a sentient being. The simple future he'd imagined had warped back into war, blood, and death. To say he was angry about it was an absolute failure of language. Another part of him was dismayed about how easy it all was to kill this person. Easy physically. Easy emotionally. Autobots shouldn't find this stuff possible...let alone easy. "Three" found it more than easy. Three wished they weren't in such a hurry. Someone needed to pay for messing up his day.

Lancer dropped down like a panther in front of him. She looked him up and down, noting the ultra-green eyes and the way he held his dagger so very tightly. Green goo from the Nebulan dripped off its tip.

"Wipe it off," she whispered. He complied, never taking his eyes off her.

There were only six other crew members on the ship since the mining operations were mostly automated. None of them even knew they had company, except the Captain. Rodimus had a few questions for the Captain. Lancer left him to it while she went to the cargo hold and drew the life-energy out of the CVs there. She could hear the Captain's screams all the way down in the hold.

She wondered if the man appreciated Rodi's artistic side as much as she did.

They waited until they reached orbit to dump the bodies. They didn't want to mess up Asylum with trash. The fact that the navigation system named the planet Asivia 3 did nothing to change how they thought of the place. They reprogrammed the destination in the nav-computer.

Next stop: Cybertron.

Continued in comic issue Maelstrom 8


End file.
